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Phase 02 of 05
Engage & Understand
Chs 3 & 4
Business Analysis Demystified · Zoomed Phase Map
Personas & Scenarios · Stakeholder Maps & Comms Plans
Requirements without people are specifications without context. This phase builds the human and political picture that makes every downstream artefact more accurate and more persuasive. Who is affected? Who has power? What do the people using this system actually experience? These are not soft questions — they are the inputs that prevent expensive mistakes.
The question this phase must answer
“
The fundamental question of Phase 2
Do we know specifically who is affected by this change, what their current experience looks like, and who has the power or interest to shape, block, or advance it?
A requirements document written without knowing who uses the system produces a system optimised for no one. A project run without a stakeholder map runs into resistance it did not see coming. Both failures are preventable at this phase.
Chapter artefacts & prompts
CH.03
Personas & Scenarios
Build specific people to design for, not demographic averages
Persona
A named, specific character representing a real user type — their goals, frustrations, constraints, and context. Grounded in observation, not assumption.
Scenario
A concrete narrative describing how the persona experiences the current situation. The source material for journey maps and use cases.
Prompts
P01 Orient Me
P02 Show Me an Example
P03 Create Personas & Scenarios
P04 Challenge My Personas
P05 Map Persona to Journey
P06 Identify Edge Cases
P07 Review My Draft
CH.04
Stakeholder Maps & Comms Plans
Map power, interest, and influence before they map you
Stakeholder Map
A power/interest grid identifying everyone who can shape or be shaped by the work — supporters, blockers, influencers, and the disengaged.
Communications Plan
Who needs to know what, how often, in what format, and from whom. Built from the stakeholder map, not from a template.
Prompts
P01 Orient Me
P02 Show Me an Example
P03 Build a Stakeholder Map
P04 Analyse Stakeholder Dynamics
P05 Write a Comms Plan
P06 Manage a Difficult Stakeholder
P07 Review My Draft
How the work flows through this phase
01 / 06
Identify candidate personas
Who actually uses or is affected by the system or change? Name roles, not individuals.
02 / 06
Ground in observation
Interview, observe, or review complaints and feedback. Assumption-built personas produce documents no one uses.
03 / 06
Build the stakeholder map
Power vs interest grid. Who can block? Who must approve? Who needs informing?
04 / 06
Identify the difficult stakeholders
High power, low interest or active resistance. These need a specific engagement strategy.
⚡ No project proceeds without a named engagement approach for blockers
05 / 06
Draft the comms plan
What, to whom, how often, in what format, from whom. Built from the map, not from a template.
06 / 06
Feed forward
Personas feed Ch.11 journey maps. Stakeholder map feeds the business case audience analysis in Ch.7.
Practitioner confidence curve
Phase startPhase end
Engaged, curious
Clearer picture
Complexity surfaces
Political map settled
Traps & failure modes
Trap 01
Assumption-built personas
A persona created at a desk without any observation or interview is a stereotype with a name. It produces requirements that nobody who actually uses the system would recognise.
Trap 02
The incomplete stakeholder map
A map with only supporters is a wish list. The resistors and the disengaged are the ones who will sink the project if not engaged deliberately.
Trap 03
Comms plan as formality
A comms plan filled in because the project methodology requires one, then filed and never used, is worse than no plan — it creates the illusion of stakeholder management without the substance.
Feeds forward & practitioner signals
→What this phase feeds into
→
Phase 3 — Define & Analyse
Personas ground the requirements in real user needs. Stakeholder map informs who must sign off on scope.
→
Phase 4 — Make the Case
Stakeholder map tells you who the business case needs to persuade and what their concerns are likely to be.
→
Phase 5 — Deliver & Close
Personas are the subjects of journey maps (Ch.11) and the actors in use cases (Ch.10).
💬What practitioners say at this phase
💬
There are a lot more stakeholders than I expected.
💬
The personas are making the problem feel real.
💬
I didn't know who to involve until I mapped this.
💬
Building personas from assumptions produces documents no one uses.
Business Analysis Demystified
14 prompts · 2 chapters · Phase 2 of 5