Stakeholder Engagement

Because digital twins can be disruptive and are mostly implemented cross-domain, they affect many stakeholders. That’s why stakeholder engagement is crucial when implementing digital twins.

Digital twins can only be successful if relevant stakeholders are committed to their implementation and success.

Organisations face several challenges when implementing digital twins:

  • Stakeholders aren’t aware of digital twin possibilities.

  • Stakeholders may feel their job is threatened by introducing a digital twin.

  • Stakeholders move positions and organisations, disrupting ownership in the organisation.

  • Affected stakeholders have not been involved enough, don’t see the value and might intervene in later stages of digital twin implementation. For example, having a security officer involved later in he process can have significant negative impacts on digital twin design, risking it not meeting security policies.

These challenges can be addressed by proper stakeholder engagement:

  • Conduct extensive and detailed stakeholder mapping to identify each stakeholder type based on their accountability and responsibilities.

  • Develop the holistic Motivation Stack: engage with all types of stakeholders through interviews and workshops to identify the interests of each stakeholder type.

  • Define each intended digital twin use case with key stakeholders that fit their interests and add value. These use cases should be formalised in SMART sets of functional and non-functional requirements.

  • Use the use case catalogue to transfer industry-specific digital twin knowledge to the broader group of relevant stakeholders, and engage with these stakeholders through workshops and inspiration sessions. This catalogue will educate stakeholders about digital twin possibilities, value, risk, and mindset.

  • Realise stakeholder-related use cases and requirements across businesses and application services. This should be expressed in an enterprise architecture.
    The stakeholder engagement process should be designed with an enterprise architecture context in mind, ensuring the result is sustainable for ongoing digital twin development and helping prevent the digital twin from becoming siloed in the overall application landscape.