My colleagues and I have recently been working on a large project to revamp a core process for the company. In that work, I am reminded of how critical stakeholder analysis is to the success of any change initiative. It is so important to think broadly and thoroughly identify all the functions and people who will be impacted by the proposed change – so you are not caught off guard when an overlooked stakeholder torpedoes the project with a question about how they’re supposed to complete their work now that xy&z has changed. (We witnessed that in a separate project a few months ago and lost time doubling back to retrofit a solution and incorporate the forgotten interdependency.)