# Stakeholder & Decision Rights Mapping

Establishes who decides, who must be consulted and who is only informed — before the work needs an answer and cannot get one.

## Deliverable

One Markdown document, `stakeholder-map.md`, in the structure set out under **Output** below. It takes the approver and constraints recorded by **Product Discovery & Scoping**, and its decision rights are what lets a roadmap resolve a conflict instead of averaging it.

## Required inputs

- **The decisions the work will face** — the choices that must be made, even roughly stated. Without them this maps people to nothing.
- **The people or roles involved**, as named by the requester.

If either is absent, stop and report it. Never assign a decision right from a job title alone: a title describes seniority, not authority over a particular choice.

## Optional inputs

- The organisation chart, and where this work sits in it
- Prior decisions on the same subject and who made them
- Budget authority and the thresholds attached to it
- Regulatory, legal or contractual sign-offs the work requires
- Known disagreements between the people involved

Each absent input becomes an entry under **Open questions**, never an inference.

## Execution

**1 — List the decisions, not the people.** Start from the choices the work will face. A map built from people first produces a list of everyone's interests; a map built from decisions produces a list of who can unblock what.

**2 — Assign one accountable person per decision.** Exactly one, by name, or by role where the post is unfilled. Two accountable people is the same as none, and the map records that state as `contested` rather than splitting it.

**3 — Separate consulted from informed.** Consulted means their input changes the outcome and is sought before the decision. Informed means they are told afterwards. Treating the second as the first is where the schedule goes; treating the first as the second is where the rework comes from.

**4 — Record each person's stake and their constraint.** What they gain or lose from the decision, and what they cannot accept. A stake nobody has stated is left blank, not assumed from their function.

**5 — Set an escalation path per decision.** Where it goes when the accountable person cannot decide or is unavailable, and the elapsed time after which it escalates on its own. A path that ends in `the team discusses it` is not an escalation path.

**6 — Find the gaps and the contests.** Decisions with nobody accountable, decisions with more than one, people consulted on everything, and approvals whose holder is not in the room. Each is a blocker and is listed as one.

**7 — Confirm it with the people on it.** A rights map its own participants have not seen is a guess about authority. Record who confirmed their entry and when; unconfirmed entries stay marked as such.

## Output

`stakeholder-map.md`, in this order:

- **1. Scope and date** — which body of work this map covers, and when it was made
- **2. Decisions** — one line each: the decision, who is accountable, who is consulted, who is informed
- **3. People** — one line each: name or role, stake, stated constraint, and whether the entry is confirmed
- **4. Escalation** — per decision: where it goes, to whom, and after how long
- **5. Approvals required** — the sign-offs the work cannot proceed without, and who holds each
- **6. Contested and unowned** — decisions with nobody accountable, or with more than one
- **7. Open questions** — what could not be established, and who can establish it

## Validation

The map is ready when all of these hold:

- Every decision in section 2 has exactly one accountable person, or appears in section 6
- No person is consulted on every decision — that records politeness, not authority
- Every approval in section 5 names the person or role that holds it
- Every escalation path in section 4 ends at a person or a role, never at a meeting
- Every entry in section 3 is marked confirmed or unconfirmed; none is left blank

Fail the run if a decision has two accountable people and is not listed in section 6, or if any right was inferred from a job title rather than stated by someone.

## Failure handling

- **No list of decisions** — stop. Report that there is nothing to map rights over, and ask for the choices the work will face.
- **A decision nobody in the organisation owns** — record it in section 6 as unowned and raise it as the first thing the work needs. Do not estimate against a decision that has no owner.
- **Two people both claim a decision** — record both in section 6 with what each claims, and name who is senior to both. Do not resolve it in the document; the document's job is to make it visible.
- **Participants will not confirm** — deliver the map with those entries marked unconfirmed, and state plainly that an unconfirmed right is a prediction about authority rather than a record of it.
- **Partial material** — map the decisions the material supports, list the rest under open questions, and mark the map `INCOMPLETE`.