Stakeholders are identified as individuals or groups of people who may be affected by the outcome of the project. In project management, identifying stakeholders is a very crucial step because all other aspects of the project planning will be based on the stakeholders. How are you going to plan something if you don’t know who it is for?
The term “identify stakeholder” is a process of identifying the individuals or groups that can impact or will be affected by the decision or outcome of a particular project. Stakeholders are easily affected by the changes that occur within the project management planning and implementation.
The benefit of this process is that it allows the project manager to determine the right amount of focus given to each individual or group stakeholders. This is to help project managers mitigate the impact to the stakeholders and vice versa during the entire project. To identify stakeholders, it is important for the project manager to use the project charter, procurement documentations, and the enterprise environmental factors. All these things are necessary to create the stakeholder register document.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.