Before we scope anything, I find out who can say yes, who can say no, and whether either of them is the person on our calls. Usually they are not. Building for the wrong approver is the most expensive rework there is, because it looks like progress right up until the demo where the real decision-maker walks in and says "that's not what I meant".
Who is actually on the other side?
On a typical project four people matter and only one of them shows up. There is the daily contact who runs the calls, the budget holder who signs the invoices, the people whose working day the software will change, and whoever can veto: IT, security, legal, sometimes a founder.
| Role | What they control | When you hear from them |
|---|---|---|
| Daily contact | The questions, the calls, the detail | Every day |
| Budget holder | The invoice and the renewal | Once at the start, then at signature |
| Affected users | Whether the thing gets used at all | After launch, loudly |
| Veto holder | IT, security or legal sign-off | At the worst possible moment |
Four moves at kickoff surface most of them:
- Ask "who will be in the room when this goes live and something is wrong?"
- Ask "who signs the invoice?"
- Write both answers into the kickoff notes, next to what each person signs off on.
- Watch the CC line, and redraw the map whenever a new name appears.
The first two answers are rarely the same name, and neither is usually the person answering me.
What happens when the AI project came from the top?
The hardest version of this is the mandated project. Someone senior decided the company needs AI in it by a certain quarter, and the request arrives with the daily contact, who is trying to turn a mood into a specification. The demand came down a level without the reasoning attached.
I have sat in a discovery call where the brief was, in full, "we need an AI feature by Q3", and the person saying it could not tell me what problem it solved. That is no fault of theirs. It is a pattern I recognise from what happens when the board mandates AI before the use case, and it never fixes itself from below.
So we went up one level, politely, and asked the sponsor what was worrying them. It was a support backlog. Once we knew that, the AI feature became a specific thing with a measurable job, and the daily contact was relieved rather than offended, because now she had a brief she could defend.
How do you reach the sponsor without stepping on your contact?
You ask for it as a favour to the contact, so it never reads as going around them. My phrasing is close to this: "I'd like thirty minutes with whoever owns the outcome, so I can hear the goals in their words and you don't have to carry that on your own."
Framed like that, most contacts arrange it within a week, because being the only line between vendor and sponsor is a lonely place. Then I keep the channel open lightly. A twenty-minute sponsor check-in every month, with the contact in the room, always. Never a side conversation. The moment the contact feels bypassed, you have traded one problem for a worse one.
What changes once you know who decides?
Almost everything about how we communicate. Demos get built around the sponsor's actual question rather than a tour of features. The status report gets written for the forward, since I now know who it gets forwarded to. Scope decisions come back in days instead of weeks, because the person being asked is the one who can answer.
At Shanti Infosoft I treat the stakeholder map as a week-one deliverable, alongside the plan, and every AI consulting engagement opens with the same question about who owns the outcome. New names in the CC line are the earliest signal that the real decision-maker has just changed.
One last habit: I write down, in the kickoff notes, who signs off on what. In month four somebody new will join their side and ask, and a written answer beats a memory.
Who on your current project can actually say no, and when did you last speak to them directly?
Sonal Jain is delivery head at Shanti Infosoft, which has built software for 700+ companies, and she draws the stakeholder map herself on every one.
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