How a Stakeholder Matrix Can Help Product Owners Manage Expectations
Be careful. Treating all stakeholders precisely the same way is a perfect recipe for failure.
Be careful. Treating all stakeholders precisely the same way is a perfect recipe for failure.
Managing stakeholders is one of the most stressful activities of Product Owners. Everyone wants everything done by yesterday. Product Owners receive a lot of pressure from different people every day, and they often push us in conflicting directions. Knowing how to handle this daunting situation is critical to delivering meaningful value.
Understanding who your stakeholders are and how to build a solid partnership is key to success. Yet, it’s challenging to match the expectations from everyone. Sometimes it becomes a political game, and the situation gets uncomfortable. The question is, how can you solve this puzzle?
“The best solutions come from collaboration between the people with the problems to solve and the people who can solve them.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
Let me share what I found to be an effective way of managing stakeholders. Hopefully, you can apply my learning in your situation.
Understand Who Your Stakeholders Are
Do you know what the word stakeholder means? Although we often use this word, I’d like to share my understanding. It’s a person involved or impacted by a company, e.g., employees, investors, customers, suppliers, etc. In other words, almost everyone related to the company you work for can be a stakeholder. For me, the word stakeholder is confusing. I don’t think it’s practical to put everyone on the same bucket.
One of the biggest mistakes while managing stakeholders’ expectations is treating them all as our end-users. In general, I don’t like the word stakeholders because it’s too broad and causes confusion. I prefer using specific names and treating every person according to their involvement with the product.
When I looked at the Scrum Glossary, I got the following definition for Stakeholder.
Stakeholder: a person external to the Scrum Team with a specific interest in and knowledge of a product that is required for incremental discovery.
— The Scrum Glossary
As you can see, Stakeholder is a generic term used to cover complexity. Anyone with any interest in your product is a stakeholder.
At the beginning of my career, somebody told me, “your job is managing the expectations of our stakeholders.” I interpreted it as if I had to gather requirements and lead teams on building solutions. Yet, I missed the point because I treated business people as end-users.
The result was often a product our internal stakeholders loved, and our end-users didn’t want.
I perceive business stakeholders as partners instead of customers. As a Product Owner, it’s impossible to deliver value without collaborating with the right people. For example, imagine you are building a new product. For sure, you will have to deal with legal, financial, and marketing aspects. If you try solving everything on your own, you fail. You need support from the right people, in this case, the business stakeholders.
How to Manage Your Stakeholders Effectively
I confess I used to get mad with the pressure coming from stakeholders. Many times I thought I would ignore some stakeholders and focus on delivering value. That didn’t help. Stakeholders never stopped pressuring me to prioritize what they wanted. By not knowing how to handle this pressure, I led the team several times in conflicting directions.
Matching all stakeholders’ expectations isn’t our end job. Our mission is to make end-users lives better while generating value for the business.
In a world full of noise, delivering real value is challenging. To create something valuable, we need to remove distractions and focus on what matters most.
The very first step is to have a clear goal to pursue; without that is simply impossible to manage your stakeholders. I won’t go into techniques here as it’s not the goal of this post, but I’d suggest crafting a Product Vision, Product Goal, or Objective Key Results. They can be complementary, but setting any of these will already help you establish common ground with your stakeholders.
The second step is having clarity on how to collaborate with each stakeholder. If you treat all of them the same way, you will inevitably face troubles. I perceive power, interest, and attitude as three critical points to evaluate for each stakeholder. Therefore, I like working with the following matrix:
Monitor — Low power and low interest: this group of people shouldn’t drive your decisions and consume your time. When stakeholders have low interest and low power, you should not involve them in the development process. Yet, you should be careful with how you deal with their eventual demands.
Keep Satisfied — High power and low interest: some people have the decision power but are uninterested in your initiative. However, you should ensure alignment with them; otherwise, you will face resistance and ultimately slow down or progress.
Inform — Low power and high interest: I consider this group as the most dangerous. People with high interest tend to be quite active and demanding. Still, if they lack decision power, you should be careful with how their input influences your decisions.
Manage Closely — High power and high interest: this is the group you should work on your daily business. People with high power and high interest will help you deliver value faster. Engage with them as close as you can.
Attitude: in addition to power and interest, you should evaluate which attitude everyone has. Once you have clarity on this, it will become easier for you to deal with everyone.
Whenever I start working on something, I create a stakeholder matrix. That helps me have a clear picture of the people I will work with. Without that, I would be blind. It’s inefficient engaging with all stakeholders; you need to know what to expect from everyone and how to deal with them.
This matrix shouldn’t take you long to create. It’s not about having a process of handling stakeholders but having a strategy of how to engage with people around you. Stakeholders will always push you. If you don’t know their real interest and power, confusion is ahead of you.
“Good strategy isn’t a detailed plan. It’s a framework that helps you make decisions.”
― Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
Don’t Let Opinions Drive You
Power is dangerous. Powerful people tend to influence others. Many times in my life, business stakeholders pushed for something based on their opinions, even though they lacked solid evidence. As a Product Owner, you should learn how to differentiate opinions from facts.
It’s our job to ensure opinions don’t drive our decisions. Whenever we stumble upon opinions, we should identify the assumptions behind them and decide whether it’s worth validating them or not.
Managing stakeholders is critical to building successful products. However, we should never forget who our end users are. Stakeholders should help us deliver value instead of defining what the end-users need.
Confusing all stakeholders with end-users is the right way of building a product nobody needs.
