Gathering project perspectives
Effective project managers work to understand the diverse perspectives stakeholders have about a project, so they can manage conflicts and keep everyone engaged. Interviews and polling are two standard approaches. Here are other effective methods to gather different viewpoints of a project.
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Interactive workshops. To identify project perspectives that are otherwise hard to uncover, consider brainstorming, mind-mapping, or other approaches involving rich interaction between stakeholders. The benefit of interactive workshops is that you can connect ideas to the outcomes stakeholders expect from the project. Free-flowing discussions can also generate new ideas, which might expand the value the project brings to the organization.
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Focus groups. These meetings allow for in-depth discussions and can reveal nuanced opinions that might not come up in larger settings. Focus groups aim to gather insights, while the goal of an interactive workshop is to solve problems, generate ideas, or provide training actively. A consensus is often the target of interactive workshops, which is not the case for focus groups. For example, an interactive workshop would be appropriate to develop potential new processes for billing customers and then select the best option by consensus. A focus group would be held to collect features that various customers would want from a new version of a product. In the focus group, consensus isn’t the goal. It’s collecting a broad set of ideas for new product features.
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Establish a sponsorship committee. A sponsorship committee can provide ongoing insights and guidance throughout the project’s lifecycle. The committee doesn’t reduce the sponsor’s decision-making power. It enables people to present other perspectives to assist the sponsor in setting project direction.
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Job shadowing. Shadowing is a powerful approach to gathering project perspectives. Observing stakeholders at work provides unique insights into how people perform their work and the potential improvements the project can deliver. Stakeholders often don’t know the potential of new tools or have difficulty articulating business challenges.
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Town hall meetings. Town hall meetings can reveal perspectives for projects with a broad impact on communities within and outside the organization. These events capture a wide range of viewpoints and concerns. Pro tip: Have an experienced facilitator run town hall meetings, because managing meetings with widely disparate stakeholders can be challenging.
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Cross-functional team rotations. Implement short-term rotations where team members work in different project areas or departments. This cross-pollination of ideas can bring fresh perspectives to the project.
Think about your current project or a recent one. How did you uncover stakeholders’ perspectives about the project? Would any of these methods help identify perspectives?
For more about stakeholders, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s Managing Project Stakeholders course or Dana Brownlee’s Managing Up for Project Managers: Working with Challenging Senior Stakeholders.
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