0 Tactics and Technologies for Stakeholder Engagement With Keith Ellis CEO, Enfocus Solutions

1 What are we going to talk about? Engagement does not happen by chance What should you “communicate”? What Questions… What Technologies… What works…?

2 About Enfocus Solutions Business Analysis and Requirements Management

3 Learning Objectives What tactics can be used to gain stakeholder interest and open them to engagement? How do you improve the dynamics of the relationship through enhanced communication and shared practices What key questions are essential for the analyst to ask? What technologies can be used to support stakeholder collaboration In PMBOK 5.1 Collect requirements 5.2 Define Scope 5.5 Control Scope 10.3 Distribute Information 10.4Manage Stakeholder Expectations In PMBOK 5.1 Collect requirements 5.2 Define Scope 5.5 Control Scope 10.3 Distribute Information 10.4Manage Stakeholder Expectations

4 QUESTION: What is the difference between StakeholderCommunication and Stakeholder Engagement

5 Communication versus Stakeholder Engagement Stakeholder engagement is: Enabled Planned Measured

6 Stakeholders want (golden rules): A say in decisions that could affect their lives. A promise that the stakeholder’s contribution will influence the decision. Seek out and facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected. Input on how they participate. Information they need to participate in a meaningful way. Communicate how their input affected the decision. Adapted from Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation by the International Association for Public Participation

7 Stakeholder Engagement Tactics: For Planning For Measuring Engagement For Enabling Engagement

8 Stakeholder Engagement is Planned When you think “Stakeholder Engagement”, most people think: o “Getting requirements” Plan your cycle of engagement: o Vision and problem definition o Ideation to feature o Feature to requirements o Requirements to value

9 Broaden the Perspective on the Stakeholders to Engage There is a tendency to focus on and engage stakeholders that are already ‘engaged’ or interested: o Keep Satisfied: Low interest stakeholders with high organizational power. o Keep Informed: Higher impacted stakeholders with lower organizational power. o Keep Monitoring: General SMEs and contributors, while always watching for related projects.

10 Stakeholder Engagement is Measured The level of stakeholder engagement is a tangible thing: Stakeholder satisfaction (or complaints) Number of stakeholder comments received Stakeholder lifecycle participation Number of participating stakeholders Stakeholder attendance percentage Number of needs identified by stakeholders Retrospectives Gather Statistics Surveys Task Participation Learning Participation Some Example Techniques

11 Stakeholder Engagement is Enabled Embed training into your plan Keep coming back to a “you are here” graphic to visualize context and focus Have stakeholders describe needs or scenarios in their own words Be clear that stakeholders must prioritize… Providing tooling for project transparency, collaboration, and to see how their participation translated into action

12 Tooling Provides Engagement Advantages Common repository Dashboards Task lists Voting Recording needs and scenarios

13 Improving Relationship Dynamics

14 Practices to Remember Stakeholders often have NO context for your content: o Keep this in mind when communicating – ALWAYS communicate project and personal context (WIIFM) in every message ‘Engagement’ and ‘pushback’ are often the same thing: o People that are passively engaged are ‘academically interested’ in what you say. o People that are actively engaged are ‘operationalizing’ what you say. Make your VALUE in the process clear.

15 How Business Analysts Deliver Value © Copyright 2013 Enfocus Solutions Inc. All Rights Reserved.

16 What questions are essential for the analyst to ask?

17 Early in the Project lifecycle Look for the governance (compliance, legal, management) or financial stakeholder involvement: o When scheduling an appointment in this clinical care system, are there conditions under which compliance, legal or management need to be informed? Look for the ways other staff groups augment a process: o I see that marketing is involved in setting pricing for promotions, are there other things that marketing needs to do for sales or operations as it relates to this catalogue system? Look for the power base: o We’ve seen four types of benefits: reducing staff time, delivering higher data quality, increasing conversion speed, decreasing conversion cost: Who would own each of those benefits? Why is that outcome a good thing for them?

18 Mid-cycle: Prioritization and Quick Wins Get people thinking about development as a balance between met and unmet needs: o What needs are met by these requirements? What’s unmet… and can we live with that? People overlook the simple questions that absolutely make a project: o What are our quick wins? People overlook asking about risk and removing barriers: o What would prevent us from achieving the business outcome? When people ask about prioritization, they often prioritize the wrong thing. o Prioritize at the feature level, not requirements…

19 Late Stage: Maximize VALUE (but minimize productivity drop) ASK EARLY AND OFTEN: Solution assessment and validation: o Does the solution address the requirements we defined? -How am I going to make that decision? Where am I going to have stakeholders involved? -Structured walkthrough… -Evaluate solution against benchmark… o Is this solution delivering against what was expected. Value realization: o What else can be done to deliver more value to the business Setting transition requirement details – get stakeholder input: o Training, data conversion, user set-up, deployment, production management, etc. o How do we minimize distraction to the business in this transition?

20 Technologies for Stakeholder Collaboration

21 Basic Stakeholder Needs Technology is the enabler… It has to support the stakeholder engagement process Contribute: Make it easy for me to find information, contribute, and track change so I’m not intimidated. Be Informed: Put all the information on this project in one place so I’m encouraged to go there. Provide Oversight: Let me do all my management of this project in one place: assign tasks, overview/track, review/approve, comment/ feedback. The end-to-end experience in a technology has to be solid

22 When you approach technology think through the end-to-end scenario of what the engaged stakeholder needs to experience See only what relates to me Get a snapshot of status Jump into an important feature I’m tracking See the drafted requirements Add a comment or vote See delivery status on something else that’s important to me Check out a project impact to my role Get on with my day…

23 Golden rules for stakeholder collaboration technology Stakeholders have NEEDS and they have business scenarios which exist for their business… o Stay away from forcing them to define their own requirements. Stakeholders do not like being asked to do highly complex tasks which have little immediate payback. o Stay away from forcing them to do their own modelling. Stakeholders LIKE to participate… if it’s easy and productive o Remember how we defined productive?

24 Stakeholders want (golden rules): A say in decisions that could affect their lives. A promise that the stakeholder’s contribution will influence the decision. Seek out and facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected. Input on how they participate. Information they need to participate in a meaningful way. Communicate how their input affected the decision. Adapted from Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation by the International Association for Public Participation

25 Learning Objectives What tactics can be used to gain stakeholder interest and open them to engagement? How do you improve the dynamics of the relationship through enhanced communication and shared practices What key questions are essential for the analyst to ask? What technologies can be used to support stakeholder collaboration In PMBOK 5.1 Collect requirements 5.2 Define Scope 5.5 Control Scope 10.3 Distribute Information 10.4Manage Stakeholder Expectations In PMBOK 5.1 Collect requirements 5.2 Define Scope 5.5 Control Scope 10.3 Distribute Information 10.4Manage Stakeholder Expectations

26 Wrap Up and A Word From Our Sponsor Call for tools for business analysis and requirements management, and, the RequirementCoach community

27 Discussion Reaching Keith: (x120) Andrea Palten