From the course: Managing and Working with a Technical Team for Nontechnical Professionals

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Balancing stakeholder needs on a technical team

Balancing stakeholder needs on a technical team

From the course: Managing and Working with a Technical Team for Nontechnical Professionals

Start my 1-month free trial

Balancing stakeholder needs on a technical team

“

- I am going to commit heresy. Customers, your stakeholders, in whatever it is that your team produces are highly important. Your goal is to give them what they want and need. That's your reason for existence so don't forget it. But another thing not to forget, the customer is not always right. So why am I making a big deal out of this? Well, in my career, I have too often seen teams beaten up by overly demanding stakeholders. There's kind of two big classes of problem customers. Class A is the I just need this one little thing people. Typical scenario, you help somebody with a special request one time and then they start coming to you for everything instead of following processes or submitting requests. I know you do this so fast and I'm kind of in a hurry, so won't you please? Well look, we all want to be nice, but there's a point where it's just being used. My advice is to stop this as early as possible. Don't process special requests without a darn good reason and let people know…

Contents