Why the leaf of the org chart is a role, not a person
Impact data that hangs off named individuals decays with every departure. Rating at the role keeps the assessment true through churn, and makes headcount arithmetic possible.
Most stakeholder analysis starts with a list of names. It is the natural place to start, and it is the reason the analysis is out of date within a quarter. People move, teams are reorganised, a manager who was the named contact for a system change leaves, and every impact that was recorded against them is now recorded against nobody.
Aspen's org tree is the tenant-wide org hierarchy: org unit, team, sub-team, role. The leaf is a role. An impact is rated at a role or a team, never at a person. This is a small decision with three consequences that matter.
The assessment survives churn
"The payroll officer role will need to re-key timesheets for six weeks" is true regardless of who holds the role in the week the change lands. The rating, the window and the description written for the stakeholder all stay attached to the thing that is actually affected. When the org tree is refreshed from an HR extract, the roles persist and the assessments persist with them.
Headcount becomes arithmetic
Roles and teams in the org tree carry headcount. That is what makes a sentence like "this High impact affects 340 people" computable rather than estimated. It is also the input to roll-up: a High rated on a role of 2 inside a group of 120 is weighted by its share of the group, and reads Low at group level, because that is what it is to the group.
Without headcount on the node, every heatmap cell is a count of impacts rather than a measure of load, and a single line item on a tiny team lights up the same as a change that reaches everyone.
Nothing sensitive is held against a name
Because ratings sit on roles and teams, the product holds no record of the form "this individual is highly affected" or "this individual is resistant". Sentiment is a snapshot per team and subject. Pulse survey responses are stored apart from the invitation list, with no key joining them. The minimum group size of five, below which no aggregate renders, is only enforceable because the unit of record is a group in the first place.
What this asks of you
An org tree needs to exist. Aspen loads it by CSV import from an HR extract today, and directory sync is on the roadmap. The org tree does not need to be perfect on day one: inheritance means a rating on a group flows to its descendants, so an analyst can rate at the team level and refine to sub-team or role as the picture firms up.