Hi Sarbit,
Yes a stakeholder is someone who has a stake in the project; that is they have some sort of interest in what the project team will do or what it will produce.
An example is a project auditor. THe auitor wants the project to have followed cerain procedures and fulfilled certain oligations along the way to delivering the outcome.
Another example is a user - who will have to adapt the way they work to accomodate a new IT system.
Different stakeholders have different importances to project teams. This importance is usually assessed in relation to their ability to help or hinderthe project team achieving the outcomes.
And so to my point: Different stakeholder requirements have different importances, and sometimes they even clash. An example of this is stakeholders to a sales campaign project. The manager of sales ants the campaign to generate as many new leads as possible. The manager of sales fulfilment will want the campaign to only achieve moderate results so that they ability to fulfil orders is not stretched beyond capacity.
Now Sarbit (and Irene) - how do you think stakeholder requirements need to be managed in business requriement documents?