Teachable Moments: Understand Your Stakeholders

Debra A. Gagne, PMP is a Project Management Professional with the Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT). Debra is a special assistant to the Chief Information Officer and is involved in a variety of projects including; open government and open data, technology training, project management and constituent interaction management.

 

Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers.

I have a story from my past that illustrates the importance of understanding who your stakeholders are.

Color printers were new technology at the time and I was tasked with implementing them. How fun! I procured several--and in the process learned all about color and printing technologies. I created interfaces and print drivers so any PC could print to them. I created many pretty documents. But what I failed to do was to understand that the stakeholders who would be creating color documents were the folks over in communications and design. They were the real target users--the “technology outliers”. They were using Macs--a technology that I knew nothing about and had not figured out how to print from. My six-month project turned into a 12-month project due to my lack of initiating the project properly.

Tips:

1. Do you research on your stakeholders, either through direct conversations or researching online or in the field.
2. Don’t assume that you can think like your customer. To …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.