Stanford University Systems Engineering & Integration Paper

Assignment #1 – Identify Stakeholders!While System Requirements play a more important role in being able to create an operable system,
identifying stakeholders is a key component to overall system success. Customers often don’t know
how to give clear requirements for systems – often providing specifications that they would like instead
of how they want the system to operate. Each system will also have many stakeholders. Some may be
financially interested in the success, others might be end-users of the system and have little power in
the final system. This activity will have you work identify as many stakeholders to the system
described as you can – and will be discussed in the next lecture.
What will we do?
You will read the short system description provided below on the system for which you are serving as a
Systems Engineer. As you read, reflect on potential stakeholders that you need to consider as the
system is being built.
• What is their financial interest in the project’s success?
• What motivates them? (desires, needs, values, rights)
• What resources do they control?
• What information from the system might they value most?
• How frequently do we need to communicate with them?
In your own notes, write down each of the stakeholders that you can think of (whether easily identified
in the system, or potential hidden stakeholders that are not mentioned). Please include the following
information:
Name: [Stakeholder’s full name – or a pseudonym for the stakeholder]
Role: [Stakeholder’s position in the company or project; you might need to list multiple roles]
Involvement: [High, medium, low]
Influence: [High, medium, low]
Support: [Do they support the project? Yes, no, impartial]
Conditions met: [Does the project accomplish what they want it to do? Yes, no, partly]
Motivation: [What motivates them? Add comments here.]
In the next class, we will review some of the stakeholders that you have come up with in your
assignments. A future “Project Assignment” will involve the stakeholders you (and others) have come
up with to build a Stakeholder Analysis Document.
System Description
You work for a relatively small company of 16 developers & engineers split into two teams – a Social
Media team and Cryptocurrency team, each with their own managers. The CEO and CTO have
secured seed funds from 2 angel investors. This funding is intended to pursue a possible competitor to
Facebook by pursuing a decentralized, blockchain social media system.
This system is intended to make sure that all data ensures the privacy of the user generating the
information (whether posting status updates, sharing “cat videos” or their use of “Arch Linux, BTW”,
or sharing more sensitive data). You hope to monetize the system by allowing users to share specific
information with advertisers and sharing part of the revenue with your users through a Cryptocurrency.
You will also monetize through user’s purchase of goods and service from fellow users through a very
small fee for the exchange of the Cryptocurrency.
Why are we doing this?
Identifying stakeholders can be challenging. While the task of stakeholder analysis can (and should) be
conducted over the life of a System’s development, it is best to come up with as many potential
stakeholders before beginning the SE process to ensure you identify all of the key players and
communication methods. Failing to keep people at the proper level of engagement and communication
can lead to failures in the overall system.
Learning Objectives
This assignment makes use of multiple course objectives
• Structure key steps in the SE processes from stakeholder analysis to transition of systems to
operations
• Analyze the roles of humans in IT systems as beneficiaries, designers, operators, and
maintainers of the system