UX Glossary | S
Stakeholder profile
Also: Stakeholder analysis
A document that organises what is known about one stakeholder, their goals, influence and concerns, so the team can engage them deliberately.
A stakeholder profile records what you know about a specific stakeholder in a form the team can act on. Typical fields: their role, what they want from the project, what they are worried about, how much influence they hold, how much they currently support or resist it, and the best way to reach them.
What it is for
It turns scattered impressions into a plan. Most designers carry a mental model of who matters on a project, and it is often wrong in a predictable way: they over-weight the people they see weekly and under-weight the one who never attends the meetings but holds the budget.
Writing profiles forces the question of who can stop the project, who can speed it up, and what each of them would need to see in order to say yes. The output is practical: which stakeholders get a workshop, which get a one-page summary, which need a private conversation before the review.
Profile versus persona
A profile is about an actual person or team. A stakeholder persona is a reusable type. Profiles are therefore sensitive documents. They contain candid judgements about colleagues, so keep them with the core team and write nothing you would not say to the person’s face.
Common mistake
Filling it in once and never updating it. Support shifts after a reorganisation or a bad demo. Review profiles at each project milestone, ideally alongside a relationship map.