Stakeholder Interview Template
What are the project's goals and constraints?
Questions it can answer
- Who cares why we're doing this research?
- How involved are these team members going to be?
- Can anyone else help me out?
What is a stakeholder interview?
Stakeholder interviews are used in the very early stages of a project to understand the different stakeholders that are involved and learn about their views and opinions of the project. Generally when planning your research activities you want to interview your stakeholders before you start to think about interviewing users.
Stakeholder interviews aim to develop understanding around the aims and goals of the project, any constraints, historical background, existing assumptions and anything else that could be relevant. Stakeholder interviews also assist in building trust and relationships within the project and wider team.
Related guide: For turning stakeholder input into a session plan, see how to write a discussion guide.
Do it faster with a Claude skill: Discussion guide builder. Builds a first draft of this study in Claude that you can edit before you send it.
The questions in this template
These are the questions in the Great Question stakeholder interview template.
What in your view are the aims of the project?
Why is this project important?
How does this project fit into the wider organizational objectives?
What problems do you think we're trying to solve for users?
What do we already know about the problem space?
Have any other projects tried to achieve anything similar in the past? How did they go?
How would you define what success for this project looks like?
What would you consider to be a failure for this project?
What do you see your role in the project as being?
What concerns do you have for the project?
What are you most excited about?
How much do you see yourself being involved in the project?
How will the outputs of this project be used?
Who else should I be talking to?
What question should I have asked you that I didn't?
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Advantages
- Great for getting historical context
- Nearly required for all cross functional research projects
- Clearly defines goals from the start
Limitations
- Depending on the size of the team, can take time
- Has to be augmented with team wide meetings
- Hard to do with lack of research buy-in
Frequently asked questions
What questions should I ask in a stakeholder interview?
What the project aims to do and why it matters, how it fits wider objectives, what problems it should solve for users, what is already known, what success and failure would look like, their role and concerns, and who else you should talk to. This template covers those in 16 questions.
When should stakeholder interviews happen?
At the start of a project, before you plan research with users. They set the goals and expose assumptions the user research should test.
How many stakeholders should I interview?
Everyone who will make or block a decision based on the research, plus anyone with history on the problem. For most projects that is a handful of people. Ending each interview with "Who else should I be talking to?" helps you find the rest.