This presentation talks of how to manage stakeholders - Identifying Stakeholders, build a stakeholder Map and Gamifying prioritization of features through Innovation Games (Prune the Product Tree and Buy a feature)

1. Managing Stakeholders –
Influencing and Negotiation
Srinath Ramakrishnan
Agile Coach and Consultant
@rsrinath https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinathramakrishnan/

2. Agenda
• Who is a Stakeholder?
• Stakeholder Management Process
• Innovation games
• Buy a feature
• Prune the Product Tree

3. Who is a Stakeholder?
• A Stakeholder is “an individual, group or organization, who may affect, be
affected by or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity or outcome of
a project” – Project Management Institute
• Stakeholders are entities that have an interest in a given project. These
stakeholders may be inside or outside an organization which
• Sponsor a project
• Have an interest or gain upon a successful completion of a project
• May have a positive or negative influence in the project completion
• The group of people typically includes, among others
• The executive team (CEO, leaders of marketing, sales and technology)
• Business partners
• Finance
• Legal
• Compliance
• Business Development

4. Common challenges faced from Stakeholders
• Difficult to identify stakeholders and scope of responsibility
• Resistance to share information
• Urge to design the end system/solution
• Stakeholders mis-define their real needs
• Conflicting priorities when more than one stakeholder is involved with different
views
• Inadequate senior management commitment to integrate the views of other
stakeholders
https://assurity.nz/archives/common-stakeholder-challenges-business-analysts-face/

5. Stakeholder Management
Identify
Stakeholders
Analyze
Stakeholders
Prioritize
Stakeholders
Engage
Stakeholders
Communicate
Often
• Stakeholder Management is a process of managing the communication and
expectations of people who have an interest, or are interested in, your project or
initiative, and will be affected by its deliverables

6. Identify Stakeholders
• Many of the stakeholders may not initially be obvious
• Stakeholders may have the ability to
• Impact your project
• Enhance your project (SMEs)
• Slow down your projects (e.g., teams or groups you depend on)
• Remove impediments
• Lead opinions
• Facilitate the change resulting from your project
• Some stakeholders may be overlooked
• External
• Subcontractors
• Suppliers
• Competitors
• Regulatory agencies
• Internal
• IT Ops
• Production Support

7. Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement
• After stakeholder identification, the next step is to engage the individuals.
• “Power Interest Grid” of Eden and Ackerman analyses the stakeholders by taking into account their power and
their interest.
• To consider if the stakeholder likely to be interested in your product, consider if the person will be affected by it,
and to understand if the stakeholder has high power, ask yourself if the individual can influence or even veto
product decisions.
Subjects Players
Crowd
Context
Setters
Interest
Power/Influence

8. Stakeholder Analysis - Players
• High Interest / High Power
• Easy to identify – Business owners and others with significant
decision making authority
• Can kill, sustain, or nurture the project
• Help you to create, validate, and review product strategy and work
on the Product roadmap
• Good to establish a close and trustful relationship with them
• Typically easy to actively engage. Set up consistent touch points.
• Ensure that these individuals are involved with the product
continuously, to avoid loss of knowledge and handoffs

9. Stakeholder Analysis - Subjects
• High Interest / Low Power
• Typically product managers and development teams who work on
related products
• These individuals feel affected by the product and are keen to
influence it, but they cannot veto or change decisions
• Keep them involved by inviting them to strategy review meetings or
by sharing ideas with them and asking for feedback

10. Stakeholder Analysis – Context Setters
• Low Interest / High Power
• Affect the product’s context, but they take little interest in the
product itself.
• Powerful executives who can make your life difficult if they are not
on your side.
• Regularly consult with them to ensure that their opinions are heard –
but don’t let them intimidate you or dictate decisions
• Use data and empirical decisions to backup your arguments and
convince the Context Setters

11. Stakeholder Analysis – Crowd
• Low Interest / Low Power
• No interest in the product nor have the power to influence the
product strategy or decision making
• Know who they are and sufficient to keep them informed
• Monitor them and be aware if they move into other quadrants

12. Map your Stakeholders in these four quadrants
Subjects
Keep Informed
Players
Manage closely
Crowd
Monitor
Context
Setters
Keep Satisfied
Interest
Power/Influence

13. Map your Stakeholders in these four quadrants
Interest
Power/Influence
Business Owner
CIO / CTO
Subject Matter ExpertsTraining Manager
Subject Matter Experts
Business
Owner
Legal
IT Support
Project/Program Mgrs.
Project Team
Finance
Product Managers (Others)

14. Prioritize Stakeholders
• Prioritizing stakeholders is like grooming a backlog, it happens continuously
• Considerations
• Influence
• Contribution
• Interest / availability
• Engagement
• Time

15. Engaging Stakeholders
• Now that we’ve identified our stakeholders, we need to define how we’ll be
interacting with them
• Determine your touch points (Requirements workshop, Roadmap planning,
brainstorming sessions etc.,)
• Have one-on-one conversations
• Keep them informed and involved continuously
• Organize productive meetings
• Manage expectations
• Make sure the stakeholders are perfectly aware of what they will be getting. No surprises.
• Be transparent
• Be open and transparent - it is only way to build trust
• Visually show the work in progress

16. Stakeholder Commitment Curve
https://www.supinfo.com/articles/single/3043-strategies-for-stakeholder-engagement

17. Communicate Often
• Consider the best communication approach for each of the Stakeholders.
• Adapting your communication style to match theirs is essential to being heard
and receiving a more favorable response.
• Do they need to see a high-level presentation outlining the current challenges, the impact
on the business and how you propose to solve the problem?
• Or are they more detail focused and require more analysis and background?
• Communicating the information in their preferred style, they are far more likely
to be open to your proposal and want to hear more.

18. Innovation Games
• Innovation Games are serious games that solve a wide range of product strategy
and management problems across the market lifecycle.
• They are played
• With customers and internal stakeholders
• Online or in person
• Within or across organizational units
• In single or multi game formats
https://conteneo.co/

19. What makes Innovation Games unique?
• Relaxed “collaboratively competitive” structure
• Encourages team work
• Increases sharing of information
• Competitively fun
• Games utilize verbal, non verbal, written, visual and spatial forms of
communication which create rich nuanced information
• Leverages research from cognitive psychology and organizational behavior in
unique ways
• Typically used in
• Ideation
• Requirements collection and validation
• Decision making
• Retrospection

20. Why do serious games work?
• Structured
• Rules, but often no winners
• Purposeful
• Definite outcome
• Time bound
• By definition, a time boxed exercise
• Participatory
• Success depends on everyone participation
• Egalitarian
• Every one has an equal opportunity to participate
Reality is Broken : Why Games Make us better and how they can change the world” – Jane McGonigal
Defining Traits of a game

21. Core set of Innovation Games
https://conteneo.co/

22. Prune the Product Tree
• Develop ideas for new products and services
• Draw a graphic image of a tree to represent growth of
the product / service
• Add your current project portfolio / product roadmap
as leaves and apples
• Stakeholders are invited to shape the growth of the
offering
• Captures rich information about the perceptions of
the future, timing of new concepts and balance among
delivered offerings
https://www.prodpad.com/blog/product-tree-game/

23. Prune the Product Tree
• The trunk represents the core features already in your products.
• The branches are feature branches. Optionally, you can increase the thickness of
branches that are more important.
• The leaves are individual features that the workshop participants will place on
the branches. The closer the leaves are to the trunk, the closer they are to being
delivered.
• The roots represent the infrastructure that supports your product. As with any
tree, the bigger it gets, the more support it needs from its roots – so remember
your technology as you expand your feature list.

24. Prune the Product Tree – Mobile Banking App example
Secure Sign
In
Chat Bot for
Customer
Support
Fund
Transfer
Check
balances
Bill Pay
Loans
Investments
Credit Card
Shop
https://www.prodpad.com/blog/product-tree-game/

25. Prune the Product Tree – Mobile Banking App example
Secure Sign
In
Chat Bot for
Customer
Support
Fund
Transfer
Check
balances
Bill Pay
Loans
Investments
Credit Card
Shop
https://www.prodpad.com/blog/product-tree-game/
• Which “prepared features” got pruned?
• Do the trees retain their general shape?
• Are you growing your product fast enough?
• What does your root system need to look
like?

26. Buy a Feature
• A collaborative prioritization game
• Create a list of features with an estimated cost
• Players are given a limited budget
• Features are priced high enough that no single
person can buy the feature.
• Highly desired features are purchased through
collaborative negotiation
• Observation of the negotiation provides good
insight into what they are willing to pay for
• Purchased items represent the priorities of the team
• Chat logs shape results
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/how-much-it-costs-to-print-indian-currency-notes-1328879-2018-08-31
• Who purchased what?
• How much did they bid?
• Who negotiated with whom?
• What did they say?

27. Buy a Feature - Example
• A family of 7 members just bought a new car
• The now want to buy accessories
• Total cost of Accessories is Rs 65,400/-
• Budget per person is Rs. 4000/-

28. Buy a Feature – Auto Accessories
Feature Price in INR
Alloy Wheels 11500
Security Alarm + Keyless Entry 6500
Leather Seat Covers 7000
3M Complete Car Care Kit 2900
Music System 15000
Power Windows 3500
3 M Sun Control Film 4200
Bosch Megasonic Horn 1900
LED DRL Lights 8500
Custom Fitted Car Mats 4400
Total Cost 65,400

29. Participatory Budgeting - City of San Jose
www.innovationgames.com
www.everyvoiceengaged.org

30. Influence - Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion
http://atchub.net/sourcing/cialdini-influence-recruitment/
https://soundmovementinfo.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/influence_honeycomb.gif
• Reciprocity – People tend to return favors.
Obligation to give when you receive.
• Authority – People defer to experts to those in
positions of authority
• Social Proof – People will do things that they
see others doing
• Commitment and Consistency – People want
to be consistent. If they make a voluntary
public commitment, they will follow through
• Liking – If people like you, they are more likely
to say Yes
• Scarcity – People value things if they perceive
them to be scarce.

31. References
• https://continuingprofessionaldevelopment.org/stakeholder-mapping-key-to-successful-project-management/
• https://www.slideshare.net/tarangbaxi/prioritization-techniques-for-agile-teams
• https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2017/04/top-tips-negotiating-stakeholders
• https://www.smestrategy.net/blog/stakeholder-engagement-in-your-strategic-plan-pt-1
• https://www.kahootz.com/how-to-create-an-effective-stakeholder-engagement-strategy/
• https://www.supinfo.com/articles/single/3043-strategies-for-stakeholder-engagement
• https://www.phillipsgroup.com.au/insight/5-strategies-for-effective-stakeholder-management/
• http://blog.maurafaygroup.com/blog/how-to-influence-stakeholders-to-achieve-business-outcomes

32. http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/03/26/635945489150055587-869285762_thank_you.jpg
ramakrishnan.srinath@gmail.com
@rsrinath
https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinathramakrishnan/