Stakeholders

Locate the stakeholders

It is important to identify as many of the stakeholders as possible. Too often, technologists identify a single 'user' of the system, who is helping drive the project, and only speak to them. You should locate all the people that can provide you with information and those that have other interests in the system. This not only helps you gather the information you require but also keeps people informed – which helps avoid corrosive politics later in the maintenance life cycle.

One of the benefits of working on a legacy system is that you have real users you can speak to rather than having to make assumptions.

Note

To understand a system, you need to understand its stakeholders and their concerns

Below are some suggested stakeholders and job functions for a system. Your system of interest may use different titles (I'm using fewer formal definitions than ITIL) so please feel free to use your preferred names.

I've included a short section called How can you help...