Stakeholder Management & Engagement
What is it?
Firstly, let's put a definition around what a stakeholder is. We appreciate Marty Cagan's "test" to differentiate the folks in an organization who are your stakeholders from those that merely have opinions. Marty says that a stakeholder has "veto power"; they can prevent you from launching your work. They typically represent a core part of the business and may feel they need to protect their interests in support of the business. In government organizations, the network of stakeholders can be vast - folks representing functional business areas such as compliance, platform, acquisitions, legal, operations, training, etc. may all hold that "veto power."
It is the role of the Product Manager within a Balanced Team to understand the needs and constraints of all stakeholders and to bring their perspectives into the decisions made by the product team. The solutions the team builds need to work for the stakeholders as well as end-users (Designers have a responsibility to bring end-user needs into the balanced team).
To be clear, this does not mean Product Managers should default to doing what stakeholders tell us to do or build or deliver. Stakeholder Management and Engagement are the high-level practices that help us identify stakeholders with veto power, uncover their needs, understand their goals and constraints, and strategize how best to continually engage with them throughout the duration of the contract to avoid becoming blocked and ensure we're optimizing for mission impact.
There are some key plays to continuously engage with stakeholders throughout the life of a contract:
- Stakeholder Mapping helps us begin to understand the network of stakeholders in an organization, their influence, and how best to engage with them.
- Stakeholder Interviews allow us to more deeply understand stakeholder roles, what matters to them, constraints they have, and what success looks like from their point of view.
- Frequent Stakeholder Check-ins (workshops, conversations, etc) provide forums to share data & learnings, make prioritization decisions, address risks, align on vision & strategy, and determine how success will be measured
- Stakeholder Demos / Sprint Reviews could be included in your regular stakeholder check-ins, and they help demonstrate meaningful progress, collect feedback on recent work, and maintain alignment on goals and commitments.
- Backlog Refinement enables stakeholder engagement and collaboration with the team to shape future priorities.
It's critical for Product Managers to drive alignment with stakeholders while simultaneously making space for Design Thinking. Agile Product Managers focus their alignment at the vision, strategy, outcome and business/mission impact levels (i.e. a viable product/service). This helps us define success around changes in user behavior and the impact of those changes to the organization. This provides the balanced team with autonomy to explore what solutions work best that map to the high level strategy to achieve the end-user outcome.
Why Do it?
The goal around Stakeholder Management & Engagement is to make sure the product team is able to ship a solution that doesn't get "veto'ed", and has greater success of achieving desired business/mission impact.
The plays above begin to establish trust between the Product Manager and stakeholders. Stakeholders need to trust that Product Managers understand their concerns and are representing their needs when making decisions. The way to build that trust is through regular engagement and demonstrating results from our decisions. Stakeholder Engagement should foster open dialog, shared understanding, and co-creation of value.
Product Managers must also drive alignment across stakeholder groups to ensure that all stakeholders are heard and have taken part in key decisions. Without alignment, stakeholders may have conflicting ideas about what success looks like, what is/isn't a priority, and what is a viable strategy. If key stakeholders aren't in sync, it can create confusion, wasted resources, and delays if not complete blockers.
By proactively managing stakeholders, you can maintain alignment, make informed decisions, and deliver outcomes that solve real problems for your end-users and the organization.