Comments on Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success

Raghavendra Rao — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:05:58 GMT

Raghavendra,

While appreaciating all that has been said and the vital role that a Stake Holder has to play in the achievement of Organisational goals, it would be great if some more light is thrown, with illustrations, on factual situations,and how decisions have been arrived at, during contrary opinons of the Stake Holders.

Further,how the balance between the various Stake holders is achieved, in cases of discord, with illustrative examples.

Mr Blobby — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 04:33:32 GMT

hello

jon — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:56 GMT

Melissa,

Good point. The person who’s interest in a project is lower than the authority they wield over it can always be dangerous (even if they are positively oriented towards the project). And if they are influencial enough, it can be hard getting enough face-time to change their mind.

Melissa Diskin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:56 GMT

WORD on seeing more articles on this and similar work-well-with-others topics….

I’d also like to see the dangers of the “low interest, high influence” quadrant fleshed out just a bit more; in my experience a lot of damage can be done by people with limited knowledge/interest but with ax-wielding capacities. Almost any personality tool (Myers-Briggs, etc) knowledge can help provide detente.

Another good resource that has helped me with the more “touchy-feely” aspects of understanding stakeholders is the book “Emotional Intelligence at Work” by Daniel Goleman.

Thanks again, Jonathan—

jon — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:56 GMT

Paula,
Thanks for your kind words.

We advocate taking a broad approach and looking at all posible solutions to a given design challenge. This could certainly extend well beyond a specific design specification (for example, it could involve pricing or customer service strategies).

How many degrees of freedom there are depends on what we have been hired to do, and what stage the project is in. However, the technique is most effective when their are the most degrees of freedom (for example, a broadly-scoped project that has just started and is not constrained by other projects). The more tactical and constrained the project, the harder it is to come up with novel solutions that will satisfy the relevelent stakeholders.

Sometimes by taking a broad, business focused approach, it has been possible to gain more degrees of freedom for the project!

Paula Thornton — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:56 GMT

AMEN and AMEN! Can we please have a dozen more articles like this.

That said, now for the fine-tuning.

Using the same logic presented by the article as to why stakeholders are so critical, it is then also imperative that the worldview not then be limited by ‘system’ as a boundary (which generally refers to some technical solution…and if it was not the intent of the author, it will in most instances be so interpreted by the readers…it’s a common misconception).

Years ago the closest any of us could get to introducing any aspect of human factors to a system was to explain the darn thing on paper—the documentation. Some of us took it serious enough to not give a machine/engineering perspective to what we wrote. But even then, I ran into problems. When wanting to introduce the flow of the process that lead up to the technology interaction, I was immediately reprimanded for stepping outside the scope of concern.

Misguided intelligence. I spend the rest of my career attempting to break outside the scope of ‘responsibility’ in favor of the reality that humans face.