Before any interview gets booked, it helps to know whose day-to-day the solution actually touches - and whose sign-off it needs. "Who Matters the Most" in the American Airlines deck and "Who We Spoke To" in the Kraft Heinz deck are the same move: split the audience into the people who will use the thing and the people who decide whether it ships.
Two columns are usually enough to start: what this group does today, and what they need from a new solution. American Airlines split into onboard crew and engineering team, each with distinct role names and a short list of what they actually do - studying logbooks, filing PIREPs, creating maintenance reports. Kraft Heinz split into internal factory roles and external distributor roles, because a factory-only solution would have missed half the workflow.
A useful stakeholder map answers three questions per group:
- What do they currently do, in their own words, not a job-title description?
- What decision or approval do they hold that the project depends on?
- What would make them actively resistant to a new tool, versus quietly indifferent?