Project Management

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How do you manage conflicting requirements for different stakeholders?

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Michael King
Community Champion
Senior IS Project Manager| Baycare Health Systems Clearwater, Fl, United States

Have you ever had a project with multiple stakeholders and these stakeholders do not always agree on priority or other details? Sometimes they can actually provide conflicting requirements that cannot both be implemented successfully.

What actions would you recommend for the Project Manager to get these requirements back on track?

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Robert Snyder Founder & President| Innovation Elegance, LLC Chicago, Il, United States

I recommend you govern this work with Five Verbs (four rows in the project plan).

Draft, Review & Revise, Approve, Distribute.

Assign Draft to a junior but solid team member.

Assign Review & Revise to the disagreeing stakeholders.

Assign Approve to a tiebreaker, micro-escalation point, and/or the Project Sponsor.

Assign Distribute to stakeholders who should not contribute to the Requirements, but should receive the final version.

Five Verbs has teeth.

RACI has no teeth.

RACI has no interdependencies, critical path, duration, or sense of closure.

RACI work ... who knows if it's even worth documenting.

Force collaboration.

Force senior-ranking employees to have authority AND accountability.

Manage Up Without Kissing Up.

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