Are My Deliverables Ready for Stakeholder Review?
To gain buy-in and kick off organizational change practices, hold stakeholder reviews of project deliverables early in the lifecycle. That builds trust, saves time, and creates excitement for project outcomes, which promotes product acceptance. Reviewing project deliverables too early can have the opposite effect, reducing confidence and generating anxiety about change. Here’s how to ensure your project deliverables are ready for stakeholders’ scrutiny.
- Is a deliverable more content than concept? Rough outlines, placeholders for design elements, or incomplete code logic are not enough for a stakeholder review. First impressions are important—they’re hard to overcome if they go off the rails. If you have to explain what’s going on, stakeholders might doubt the project purpose and the team’s competence or direction. Hold a stakeholder review only when the work is complete enough that no explanations are needed and the team is in synch with what’s been done so far.
- The team agrees on the status of the deliverable. Make sure the entire team is comfortable with the deliverable and its purpose. If the team is confused or debates the scope, design, or priorities, that uncertainty will rub off on stakeholders. For a stakeholder review, you want clear agreement on what the deliverable will deliver, requirements, initial design, and priorities. The presentation should run like a well-oiled machine.
- Assumptions are validated (that is the assumption is now a known answer). Most projects start with significant assumptions about stakeholder needs, technical feasibility, or integration approaches. It’s risky to review a deliverable when those assumptions aren’t validated, because changes to assumptions mean wasted time, rework and reduced trust.
- Stakeholders with a “work in progress” mindset are available. You want stakeholders who are comfortable seeing works in progress, who aren’t bothered by wireframes, proofs of concept, or drafts. Don’t show unfinished prototypes to detail-oriented stakeholders. You’ll distract them from what truly matters and mess up your timeline with more stakeholder management tasks.
- The team has defined the feedback they want. A big part of a deliverable review meeting is to get feedback on what the team has put together so far. If the team doesn’t know what input they want, that lack of focus could result in opinions that muddy rather than clarify the way forward.
Make a checklist for what needs to be in place before you schedule a stakeholder review. That way, you can be sure that the review positions a deliverable for success.
For more about stakeholder management, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s Managing Project Stakeholders course.
Coming Up
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