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3 factors that can help you identify stakeholders

As a product manager, you interact with different departments, teams and people throughout the product development cycle. When trying to achieve results through others, it is critical to know with whom you are talking and their positions relative to the issue at hand.
Source: Gartner

Why is stakeholder identification critical?

You might want to identify stakeholders

1. For buy-in VS sign-off decisions
2. To consult them (subject matter experts-SMEs)
3. To inform them (they might be impacted by the outcome)
4. They have influence or authority to support prioritization
5. To collaborate with them

Factors than can help in stakeholder identification

1. Company’s governance model
2. Project Scope (Goal and objectives)
3. Complexity

Let us have a look at these factors in detail

1. Research the company’s governance model

What is governance?
Governance is a system that provides a framework for managing organisations. It identifies who can make decisions, who has the authority to act on behalf of the organisation and who is accountable for how an organisation and its people behave and perform. Source

In some companies, even those that have autonomous teams, there is some sort of governance structure. For example, if objectives need to be defined by the team themselves, they would need to get a sign-off from the higher management before they can proceed. While in some project-based companies you have to get a sign-off on the initiatives as well.

Understanding the governance structure will give you insights on sign-offs VS buy-ins

But the real challenge is when the governance model or the roles and responsibilities are not properly defined. Following activities can help you get a better grasp of the unwritten governance structure of the company

1. Talk to people who are working in a company for a long time.
2. Go through the other project documentation to identify key contributors.
3. Review the meeting minutes section in the company’s documentation (notion or confluence ). Go through the participants' names and notes to get a sense of the key persons involved in the decision-making.
4. Attend some other team meetings as a silent listener to observe how currently the decisions are getting made.

2. Define the project Scope (Goal, objectives and scope)

Define the project scope with

1. Clear objectives
2. Smart* goals
   * (small, measurable, achievable,relevant, time bound)
3. Scope and boundaries

Defining the project scope will help you identify the stakeholders that needs to informed , consulted , influenced or collaborate with

It will help you identify the team or departments to whom you either need to
1) Inform them e.g the outcome metrics might impact them

2) Consult them e.g if your strategy scope or boundary is touching their domain

3) Collaborate or influence other teams e.g if you need to do a change in the code base of another team

Depending upon the project scope you might need to re-visit the company’s governance model for buy-in VS sign-off.

3. Understand the complexity

As a product manager, you can identify complexity on a number of factors such as the product or feature itself, the problem you are trying to solve, its solution or execution or the associated risks …

Understanding the complexity will help you identify the subject matter experts (SME) that need to be consulted for your project

Depending upon the nature of the project you will need subject matter experts for one or more than one reasons

1. To help discover expected business logic (e.g risk managers, founding members, team or developer who initially developed the logic)
2. To review the solution design presented by your team which is complex and risky or has changed in the main user journey or your team has no senior developer( e.g principal engineers, solution architect, CTO )
3. To help in successful execution which might include deploying a server in a new region, working with sensitive information, expanding in a new region ( e.g DevOps team, security team)

TLDR;

1. Understanding the governance structure will give you insights on sign-offs VS buy-ins
2. Defining the project scope will help you identify the stakeholders that need to be informed, consulted, influenced or collaborated with
3. Understanding the complexity will help you identify the subject matter experts (SMEs) that need to be consulted for your project

For suggestions and feedback, please feel free to comment or contact me at my email nidasaleem333@gmail.com.