Working with stakeholders on the project
What can you do to get people interested?
The business analyst works closely with project stakeholders and is aware of the project's goals and how to determine its success.
Quite often, people important to a project may be overworked or not as interested in it as we would like. In this article, I would like to outline ways to get them interested in the project in order to obtain from them the necessary information and support necessary for the successful completion of the initiative.
I've come up with 14 tips for getting people involved in your project based on articles I've read and personal experience:
#1 Inform. The simplest thing to start with is to inform about events on the project. Invite to daily planning meetings and other calls, include them in a copy of important correspondence on the project.
#2 Be the leader in meetings. Always show that you are prepared for meetings. For example, send a list of what you would like to discuss to all participants before the meeting and write a detailed description of the meeting, as well as give it a meaningful title. Never be late for calls/meetings, or better yet, arrive/connect slightly in advance.
#3 Meet halfway. If the person you need is usually busy, be prepared to meet with him outside of working hours if this is the only chance to catch him to discuss important details on the project. This openness will show them that you yourself are interested in the project.
#4 Let them make decisions. If the person you need is withdrawing from the project, it is likely because they feel they are not required to participate in the activity, so make them feel that their opinion really matters. Ask them questions, offering implementation options and ask them to choose the best option, which will then be implemented. Write and send the results of the meetings in a separate letter to all participants.
#5 Deliver value. Every project was started because it aimed to bring value to the company. One of the main tasks of a business analyst is to understand this value and convey it to all persons associated with the project. Properly explaining the value of a project to both the company and the individual can be a powerful tool to get people interested in helping make the project happen. After all, people may not know or simply forget what global value a project or a particular task brings.
#6 Build trusted relationships. We are all people first and foremost, and we have lives outside of work. Ideally, personal life should not influence professional life, but this only happens in books and slogans, so it is important to build trusting relationships with important people in order to understand their hidden motives and be prepared for their reactions to certain situations, and to understand how and when you can contact them. This can be helped by, for example, keeping up-to-date conversations about the weather or weekend plans at the beginning of meetings.
#7 Teach. The people needed for a project may not be active simply because they do not know what is needed to develop the software and therefore assume that their participation is not needed. Tell them why you need this or that information – this will increase their interest in conversations with you.
#8 Present information simply and clearly. Try to present information in the simplest possible terms that the listener will definitely understand. It is also important to use visual elements whenever possible, as they are easier for most people to understand and digest. Use templates and diagram types that are familiar to them for presentation. If you don't know what they're familiar with, it's a good idea to resort to diagramming standards like BPMN, UML, or others. The higher the level of abstraction you choose for your presentation, the more people will be able to understand it and absorb the information.
#9 Organize the availability of information. Provide everyone associated with the project with a place where they can get all the information about the project at any time, and keep the information up to date.
#10 Find the right people. Conduct a stakeholder analysis in advance – know their influence on the project, the time zone they work in, their managers, and even their managers' managers. Collect as much information as possible about each participant to build the right format of communication.
#eleven Be prepared to escalate. If the person you need for a project takes too long to respond, you can always ask their manager or their manager’s manager. But you need to be careful with such communications – each such request must have a real justification, must be formulated as clearly and objectively as possible, in calm business language. This way you will protect yourself from possible dissatisfaction.
#12 Develop a communications plan. The best way to protect yourself from possible dissatisfaction during escalation is to draw up a communication plan in advance, where you define expectations for the response time of each of the participants, and identify the points and timing of escalation. This will avoid unpleasant surprises for all participants in the process.
#13 Contacting your manager is also an option.. Although, starting from the senior specialist level, you are expected to have maximum independence, sometimes the escalations described above do not help, and then there is always the option of asking your manager to help you with his connections and influence, since it is likely that your manager has access to people at a higher level .
#14 Be flexible. Also, you need to be able to adapt to your interlocutor and choose the style of communication that works best with this particular person. There is no silver bullet to any process, especially when it comes to communicating with people.
Working with multiple interested people
In English there is a word – stakeholders, denoting interested parties in a particular project or activity. Unfortunately, I could not find a full translation of this term into Russian in one word and with exactly the same meaning. Therefore, in this chapter I would like to start using it as is, I hope my reader will forgive me.
It's funny, when I first talked to my wife about this term, she was sure that stakeholders only referred to shareholders, but in fact the term is used much more often.
A stakeholder is any person or even legal body that can influence a company, product or project. They can be divided into external and internal.
Internal stakeholders:
Team members or other company employees,
Managers in the company
The owners of the company
Owners of company shares.
External stakeholders:
Suppliers,
Contract workers,
Government bodies,
Clients,
Creditors.
Below I would like to present my ideas on how you can successfully work with a large number of stakeholders on projects:
#1 Identify and organize. To begin with, you need to write out a list of strategic goals of the company in which you, as a business analyst, are working on a project or product. Next, make a list of the stakeholders available to you along with their spheres of influence. Then prepare a list of processes, tasks and projects for which you are responsible. As a final step, combine these lists to determine which of the people around you can help you.
#2 Characterize the stakeholders. Stakeholders can be categorized and characterized according to the following criteria:
Key, primary and secondary stakeholders,
External and internal,
Possible schedule for interaction with them, including frequency and time,
Convenient channels of interaction for them,
What information are they interested in?
#3 Understand their motives. Find out their ambitions for the project and how each stakeholder benefits from the success of the project or product. It will help to ask yourself questions:
Are they aware of the problem that the project/product solves?
How motivated are they to find a good solution to the problem?
#4 Adapt. Don't try to apply the same communication style to all stakeholders. Use the information you have collected about each stakeholder, including their free time and preferred methods of communication, to build an individual communication style. It is not necessary to provide all stakeholders with all the information in the same form, as they may have different expectations and needs regarding the information they receive.
#5 Value. Try to make every interaction with you valuable for stakeholders. Don't overload them with information – this may make them want to stay away from the project. At the same time, you should not give them too little information – a lack of information can either lead to their inadequate intervention in the project, or to distancing and reluctance to help where they could. Don't accumulate too much information – it's always better to synchronize them with expectations iteratively.
#6 Set a schedule. It is best to agree on a mutually convenient communication schedule that meets the needs of the project as early as possible, and stick to this frequency. It is likely that this schedule will vary for different stakeholders. For example, for external stakeholders the frequency of communication is correctly required to be lower than for internal ones.
#7 Set deadlines. Always set a deadline for when you need to get something from stakeholders. Even if you don't know them exactly, provide at least something to build on, otherwise the task risks not getting done until it's too late. It will also make planning easier for the people you interact with.
#8 Request feedback. Monitor the reaction of stakeholders when communicating with you, and adjust your processes and communication style depending on this reaction to make the work as effective and long-lasting as possible. Also, there is nothing wrong with asking the people around you how they enjoy working with you. This will show your interest and openness, which always makes you feel good.
#9 Meet one on one. It often seems that it is easier to gather everyone in one room or on one call to discuss all the issues, but such large meetings are not always effective. One-on-one meetings help build more trusting communication and obtain more accurate and detailed information.
#10 Escalate. Find out in advance who you can escalate the problem to if you can’t solve something yourself. Agree on the escalation process with all stakeholders involved to avoid any unpleasant surprises. Base your escalation on facts and objective arguments.
Conflicts
It is not uncommon for stakeholders on projects to disagree about something, how something should be developed, or in what order. In my experience, a business analyst can resort to the following strategies in such cases:
#1 First one on one. If you gather disagreeing stakeholders in one room, this can only aggravate the dispute, take it into an emotional direction, and, as a result, slow down the resolution of the issue. You, as a business analyst, need to be well prepared for such a meeting in order to be able to take it in a productive direction. To do this, you should first meet with all parties one on one, and study the position of each interested party in as much detail as possible.
#2 Company's mission. The mission and goals of a company can become a universal argument in a dispute about the right decision, because all the disputing parties work in this one company or project. Study the mission and goals so that you are prepared to use them to resolve the issue and find compromise.
#3 We're all here to solve the problem.. During a stakeholder dispute, ask each party to reveal their position by asking open-ended questions. Draw conclusions based on the project goal or company mission, reminding everyone of them.
#4 Respect every opinion. Never let anyone feel that you are ignoring or not interested in someone else's position. Even the most obscure ideas or debates can lead to a better product.
#5 Ask, don't convince. There is always a temptation to impose order with a heavy hand, believing that you yourself know what is best, but truly good things are done by groups of people with different experiences and views. During an argument, we often tend to simply try to convince the person, but instead it is much more effective to achieve this by asking the right questions. For example, you might ask how a certain decision will affect the company's reputation and long-term goals.
Conclusion
Working with people always requires an individual approach, so I would not be surprised if my advice is not enough to solve a given situation, but I hope that at least one point will help you.
