The first step in expectation management is to inventory the stakeholders. Who will be involved in working within architecture? How? How does this impact them? What are their concerns? Internal relationships between the stakeholders can be interesting. Who listens to whom?

During the inventory a distinction is made between individuals and groups.

Examples of stakeholder groups are: business strategists; policy makers; process owners; line managers; information analysts; developers and administrators.

In fact, every group who:

• delivers input for the architecture;
• works within the confines of the architecture;
• uses the architecture to dictate direction;
• makes decisions on architecture.

It is useful to create a short profile of each of the stakeholder groups: what is their position within the organization? What are their primary concerns? And what is their desired relationship to the architecture?

Besides groups there are also individual stakeholders. These are people who are visible in the organization because of their respect within their own team; people in positions of power and people whose voice is heard. In other words the soul of the organization.