Struggling to manage asks from multiple stakeholders?

As a project manager or someone tasked with implementing a new solution/ process, you may find that your stakeholders have different — often conflicting — requirements that threaten to derail your project while you struggle to meet all their needs.

You diligently do the rounds. You gather all their requirements. You try to align the needs and asks but still end up with a laundry list of things that prove difficult to integrate.

Then, to try and manage everyone’s expectations, you divide the deliverable into phases, rolling out little bits of everything in stages.

Unfortunately, in trying to make everyone happy you make nobody happy. Phase 1/ MVP rolls out to complete indifference or a cacophony of complaints, limiting usage and potentially dooming the rest of the project.

Try having your stakeholders describe their problems instead.

Most likely their problems have more in common than their asks, making it much easier to come to an alignment on a solution. This way you can design what best solves everyone’s problems rather than addressing their individual ideas about the ‘right’ solution.

Quite likely this will result in a far shorter list of requirements and allow you to deliver substantial value in the MVP itself.

Be a problem-solver, not an order-taker.