Stakeholder Engagement in a Nutshell

Let me mention this before starting the post: Some of the organizations call this as Stakeholder Management, which is, more or less the same thing. I prefer calling it Stakeholder Engagement because it is more of an activity where we are engaged with the stakeholders rather than managing them. 

 One of the most important task of being a Product Manager is to manage or engage your stakeholders. Key understanding of who your stakeholders are, why they are invested or interested in your product and what they really want is really important. So let's dig in little bit deeper about Stakeholders and how to identify and work with them. 

What do we mean by Stakeholders? 

Stakeholder can be anybody who is interested in the outcome of the endeavour. It can be any individual, group or organization who are directly or indirectly involved in the project. 

They can be Primary and Secondary: 

Primary stakeholders are the one who defines the business and are key to continuous process. 

Secondary Stakeholder is the one who could help build better relations with Primary Stakeholder like business partners, competitors & regulators. 

 With this broader understanding of what a stakeholder is, let me talk about some key stakeholders within the organization for Product Managers: 

1. Leadership {CEO , executives, higher management}
2. Developers, QA , UX innovators who will help you develop the Product 
3. Marketing and Sales Team 
4. Project Manager and Product Owner 
5. Customer Engagement Team 

Product Managers need to communicate with internal stakeholders on daily basis; it is always a good practice to inform your team not just what they need to build but also WHY. Given the development team is fully aware of the WHY aspect of solution, it helps during planning sessions or story sizing. Also, the key during these sessions is to listen these people closely as they also have brilliant human centric solutions. 

What is Stakeholder Engagement? 

Stakeholder Engagement is systematic identification, analysis and planning of actions to communicate with, negotiate with and influence stakeholders. 

One should have stakeholder management plan which capture stakeholder characteristics, needs and expectations and their level of influence. Best practice is to populate this at the start of the program and treat it as "live" document throughout the course of your program. 

This post is to explain what needs to be delivered during all Stakeholder Engagement stages of the program. It will provide you" how" and "why" for each stage during Stakeholder Engagement Process, help track actions and ensure delivery as expected. 

Stage 1 : [Identify] your key stakeholders. This is the step which details stakeholders who have an interest in and power over the ability of the program team to deliver its objectives. 

Can be easily identified using the various models available: [quoting few below] 

PEST{EL} model stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal where {EL} gets added depending on the project requirement for external environment. 

SWOT model stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats which focuses on actions one take INTERNAL to their business environment. 

Stage 2: [Analyse]  Stakeholder Analysis: By Schmeer, a process of systematically collecting and analysing qualitative information to determine whose interests should be taken into account when developing and/or implementing a policy or a programme. 

While doing this one must aim to identify everyone with a concern/interest in the project. 

Analyse needs, fears, preferences and expectation of the stakeholders. Get in touch with stakeholders, communicate and LISTEN to their needs and expectations, understand how they feel about the idea of introducing or enhancing the product. 

Stage 3: [Plan] the future with Stakeholders by identifying their level of influence and interest, this can be achieved by plotting them on Stakeholder Matrix . 

 Stakeholder Matrix:    

Stage 4: [Act] upon how to engage and communicate. 

• Engage them by taking survey(s). 
• Share survey highlights with them. 
• setup regular meetings with key stakeholders, identified using stakeholder matrix. Meetings should be for communications as well as nurture and grow the level of trust and relationship. 
•   report to owners (stakeholders) about the progress. 

Stage 5: [Review]: As stated above, treat the entire process as a LIVE document, keep on reviewing the change in stakeholders, their needs, what's bothering them , what do they like etc. It's your stakeholders who will determine the success , failure, of your project. 

Stakeholder Engagement for me is an art, the way you keep everyone in loop along with keeping them engaged and excited about what's coming next and how it will shape up is one of the crucial skill to have as a Product Manager.