Do you approach stakeholder management differently based on the team you're talking to? (Design, Marketing, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success). And if so, how?

Yes and no. I think of these relationships in terms layers of depth. Design and Engineering are, of course, your deepest stakeholder relationships. You're building a product together, so the dynamic is fundamentally different. Customer Success (and Support) should be the next layer. They should generally have a better understanding of the product than your go-to-market stakehodlers, and the time they spend with customers usually leads to more specific insights. This relationship can and should b ...Read More

There are some commonalities and some differences. First and foremost, across all constituents, I always promise that product management will always listen to them, carefully consider their feedback and advice, but we may not do what they want. This isn't to be mean. Many constituents not worked with truly empowered, autonomous product teams, so they don't understand why product management is not just a department of project managers to shepherd through work orders that they are issuing in the f ...Read More

My approach at my current and former company (both of which are medium sized) is based on how well-resourced the other team is. For example, in experiences where Design and Marketing are still growing into the opportunity, I've found that the most beneficial conversations tend to be focused on prioritization and sequencing. With functions that tend to operate at a greater scale, like Sales and Customer Success, I have found it is best to quickly figure out who can be your "single point of contac ...Read More

The answer is Yes. We do not expect every stakeholder will have same questions, similar stakes, similar mindset and same requirements hence management will be different when reaching out to various stakeholders. 'How'- do I manager different stakeholders, is a broad question and I am unable to provide an answer that will be standard for various teams, this is not pragmatic. However, in general, we keep them updated on project contexts, changes, lowlights & highlights at least weekly, to avoi ...Read More