Stakeholders: who is your system for?

It used to be said that "he who pays the piper calls the tune". In those happy, far-off days, a client contacted an engineering firm, stated their requirements, and paid for the resulting system. or at least that was the theory. but was it ever so simple. Stakeholder analysis is not a science, and does not involve excitingly challenging branches of control theory. Yet the issues that it addresses have to be faced by every project and, on current evidence, it would be a good thing if it were taken far more seriously by many engineering projects. In a nutshell, people matter; and people play many different roles, all crucial to project success. Projects need to know the roles involved, and the viewpoints of the stakeholders playing those roles.