In designing and developing a website (either a new site or a refresh) there are many competing interests that must be properly managed to get the project done. No matter the project you are working on, you are guaranteed one thing: not to give everybody everything they want.
The key is to understand who stakeholders are, and balance their needs with the amount of effort required.
Who are Stakeholders?
Stakeholders are the people that might influence your project. They often have specific agendas based on their areas of interest, and they can affect the completion of a project.
Stakeholders can also be internal to your company or external such as end users. It is often helpful to identify stakeholders for a project before you begin. Once they are identified, keep in mind the level of influence each stakeholder may have. Some may have a strong influence (ability to kill the project) or a weaker influence. No matter the influence, you should keep stakeholders in mind for your projects.
Because of the broad range of stakeholder needs, they often have competing priorities that must be appropriately managed. For example, technical stakeholders want efficient, robust, and cost effective technologies that perform well. Marketing stakeholders may want sellable features they can take to market and are less concerned with the technical stack.
To identify your stakeholders, ask yourself these five key question:
- Who is interested in the project’s outcome?
- Who might be impacted or disrupted in their daily work by the project?
- Are any of our current customers impacted?
- Is there a new group of customers the project will help us reach?
- Who has control over the resources to complete your project?
Appropriately managing these competing priorities leads to better outcomes and more successful projects.
Why do Stakeholders have different priorities?
Stakeholders will view a project through their specific set of circumstances and needs. For example, a technical stakeholder may care that a website is fast, secure, and is built with the best technology. Likewise, a marketing stakeholder may care about copy, graphics, and workflow but be less concerned about security and technology stack.
It isn’t a matter that one is better or worse than the other (pro tip: they are both essential). The key is to understand both perspectives and make decisions with both differing perspectives in mind.
How can you manage competing Stakeholder priorities?
Set Expectations
Starting any decent sized project should start with setting expectations. For example, you probably want to set the expectation that though decisions will need to be made but all ideas will be reviewed and evaluated. If expectations are properly set at the beginning, it may make the process much smoother.
Tips for setting expectations:
- Have ground rules for meetings so everyone knows the process.
- Create a collaborative and friendly atmosphere.
- Clearly lay out the end goal of the project so you are working with the end in mind.
Listen and validate
No one likes to feel their ideas are not heard or not appreciated. Make sure all of your stakeholders feel like their ideas are being taken seriously and are part of the larger discussion.
Tips to show you are listening:
- Track all ideas. Make sure your stakeholders feel their ideas are tracked in some central document that is shared with all. This shows you are taking everything into account and facilitating idea discussion.
- Don’t automatically dismiss. Even if an idea may seem out of reach or not a part of the project, track it anyway. Those off the wall ideas may turn into something real an tangible with a bit of additional digging and discussion.
- Use affirming language and active listening. There are many verbal and non-verbal techniques you can use to make sure people know you listened to what they heard. Try to integrate these into your discussions. Even a simple repeating back of the idea to the stakeholder can do wonders.
Prioritize Needs with “say no with a why”
There will be a lot of competing needs with a project of any size, and you can’t do them all. If you need to say no to some ideas from stakeholders, make sure you have a good solid reason that is founded in data. This will help communicate the “why” you are saying no and not just saying no.
So, let’s say you are working on a revamp pf a website and someone suggests building out a robust user portal and dashboard that is not essential to your business. Before saying no work with some technical folks to determine a rough work estimate and assign a dollar value to the project. Chances are if you show the dollar value balanced with the benefit to users, the reason you are saying no will be clear.
Tips for saying “no with a why”:
- Gather data to support both yes and no decisions.
- Use data that all can relate to. This often means translating into dollars and ROI.
- Summarize and simplify. The reason for saying no does not need to be a novel. Have a few simple bullet points that can be shared in and outside of the stakeholder group.
Work to gain agreement and have open discussions
Getting agreement on priorities and project direction from stakeholders can be challenging but is worth the effort.
Tips for facilitating open project discussions:
- Schedule the right people for the right meetings. Meetings with stakeholders should have representatives from various groups. For example, if you are working on website updates, have representatives from technical, marketing, UX, and sales.
- Have an agenda and stick to it. Stakeholders are more likely to get value from the meetings if there is an efficient agenda that gets things done.
- Leave room for discussion, but in moderation. All attendees of meetings should be heard, but no one member should dominate. You may need to encourage some to participate and reign in others from bloating the discussion.
Document, document, document
In a project of any size, you will undoubtedly have a number of meetings, phone calls, and emails along the way. Tracking the agenda and decision points makes it much easier to avoid backtracking on decisions that have already been made.
By clearly tracking and disseminating the meeting notes and decision points, you have a solid foundation to refer back to should the same discussion come up over and over. Make sure to reference decisions that have already been made. Changing you mind is fine, but there should be a really good reason for doing so.
“No” should often mean “Not Now”
Never lose track of ideas from stakeholders. While some ideas and wants may be very outrageous, most will be reasonable and might warrant future consideration. If your ideas are tracked properly, you will have a future reference that is documented and shared.
All in all, website designs and refreshes will have a number of proverbial “hands in the cookie jar” and successfully managing both relationships and expectations is essential.
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