You don't need a tool to build a power/interest grid. You need a spreadsheet and about fifteen minutes. Excel is genuinely capable of this — the question isn't whether it can hold a stakeholder map, it's whether it can keep holding it once the engagement is three months in and the map hasn't been touched since kickoff.
Set up the columns
Four columns cover the basics: Name, Role, Power (a score from 1–5), and Interest(also 1–5). Add a fifth, optional column for notes — what you've actually observed about them, not their title. Score on what they do, not what their job description says: who signs off on budget, who shows up to every call and asks pointed questions, who sends a delegate instead.
Turn the scores into a grid with a scatter chart
Select your Name, Power, and Interest columns and insert a Scatter chart (Insert → Charts → Scatter). Power goes on the X-axis, Interest on the Y-axis. Set both axis minimums and maximums to 0 and 5, then add two straight lines at the midpoint of each axis — either with the built-in gridlines or by plotting a second, invisible data series at (2.5, 0) and (2.5, 5) for the vertical split, and the mirror for the horizontal one. That splits the chart into four quadrants: manage closely (high power, high interest), keep satisfied (high power, low interest), keep informed (low power, high interest), and monitor (low power, low interest).
Use conditional formatting to color the source table
The chart is the visual, but the table is what you'll actually scan day to day. Add a formula column that returns the quadrant name based on the Power and Interest scores — something like =IF(AND(C2>=3,D2>=3),"Manage closely",IF(AND(C2>=3,D2<3),"Keep satisfied",IF(AND(C2<3,D2>=3),"Keep informed","Monitor"))). Then apply conditional formatting rules keyed to that column — a color per quadrant — so the whole row highlights at a glance without needing to look at the chart at all.
Sponsor, VP Operations — Power 5, Interest 5 → Manage closely (highlighted red).
Procurement lead — Power 4, Interest 2 → Keep satisfied (highlighted amber).
Project manager, day-to-day contact — Power 2, Interest 5 → Keep informed (highlighted blue).
End users on the team — Power 1, Interest 3 → Monitor (highlighted gray).
One glance at the highlighted table tells you the same thing the scatter chart does, without having to open it — that's the whole point of doing both.
Where this genuinely holds up
For a single, time-boxed engagement — score it once in week one, revisit it once before a big steering committee meeting — this setup is completely fine. It's free, it's fast to build, and nobody on your team needs training to read a color-coded table. If that's the whole job, stop reading and go build it.
Where it breaks down
The failure mode isn't the formulas — it's time. A stakeholder map is a snapshot of a relationship that keeps moving. The sponsor who scored 5/5 in week one gets promoted and hands the project to someone new. The skeptical procurement contact who scored low interest starts pushing back hard on renewal terms. None of that shows up in the spreadsheet, because nothing prompts you to open the file and re-score anyone. It just sits in a folder, accurate as of the day you built it and slowly less accurate every week after.
The other gap is where the map lives relative to everything else you know about the client. The spreadsheet doesn't know when you last spoke to the sponsor, doesn't link to the notes from the kickoff call, and doesn't travel with the account if someone else on your team needs to pick it up. It's a standalone file next to — not connected to — the rest of the client record.
If you're managing one engagement at a time, that's a manageable gap. If you're juggling several client relationships and the map for each one needs revisiting on its own schedule, a static file with no memory of when it was last updated stops being a system and becomes one more thing you have to remember to check.