apm 6 2

Stakeholder engagement. This is a fantastic topic and it's one I hear about all the time. I hear things like, well, great, Mike. So now I've got to include stakeholders in every meeting we have so that they can provide feedback on everything we're doing. Who's gonna have time for that? Well, I would agree. Who would have time for that? No, instead we need to be strategic about how we engage with them. Remember earlier I said product owners, they don't have to do this alone. And while they have ultimate decision making authority around scope and the backlog, they can't operate in a vacu. Okay, so nearly all of our engagements, they require input from a range of stakeholder groups to reach our desired outcomes. How we identify and continuously engage stakeholders, it's an important success factor. So let's look at a three step stakeholder analysis process that can help product owners and team members effectively engage with their stakeholders. Step one, identify. Facilitate a session with the full project team to pinpoint all of the people or groups who have an interest in what's being developed. Step two, prioritize from the list of stakeholders, identify those that will have the most influence and impact on your project. And Step three, understand for each of the key players, document what motivates them. Understand how the project priorities align with their motivations and establish strategies for engaging them over the course of the project. Now, when I lived in California, I was leading a large scale digital transformation project for a financial services company. And initially we had focused solely on the immediate project stakeholders. But a few months into the project, we hit a roadblock. The customer service team, which we hadn't originally identified as a key stakeholder, they started raising concerns about how the new system would impact their daily operations. Well, we missed it. And that led to some pretty significant delays in rework. But it was a valuable lesson in the importance of comprehensive stakeholder analysis and engagement. This approach, it helps anticipate potential challenges and ensure relevant perspectives all get considered very early in the process. Honestly, it's not that difficult to create a stakeholder map using the three step process I just described. In fact, let's just knock one up together, grab a piece of paper and draw two lines, one vertical and one horizontal. And this just creates a simple four box quadrant label, the horizontal axis interest and the vertical axis power. This is a priority map and let's apply that three step process to this priority map. Step one, identify. Think about your project and list potential stakeholders, anyone who can impact a decision or be impacted by it. Step two, prioritize now for each stakeholder consider their level of power, that is how much they can influence the project, and then consider their level of interest on the project's outcome. And now you're going to place each stakeholder in the appropriate quadrant. High power, high interest stakeholders go in the top right area. Now these are the ones you're going to want to manage closely. Step 3 Understand for each stakeholder, especially those in the manage closely quadrant, consider a few things. Who needs to be informed of what and when? Who needs to be consulted about what and when, and who's responsible for engaging each of these stakeholders. This map helps you develop an effective strategy to communicate with the right people and manage their expectations throughout the project. Remember, stakeholder engagement is ongoing, so be sure to revisit and update your map regularly as the project evolves. Successful agile projects are built on a foundation of strong stakeholder relationships, and by mastering the art of stakeholder engagement, you'll be better equipped to navigate these challenges and to deliver value to all parties involved.