#222 – The Dangerous Stakeholders

This strip was inspired by the great article written by Dean Peters and Productboard titled The Dangerous Animals of Product Management. In it, they describe how to manage different archetypes of difficult stakeholders while staying true to the product strategy—and, especially if you’re a product person, we urge you to go look up this article.

Remember that, even though a person is a potentially powerful and influential stakeholder, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should have a say in how you, as a PO, order your Product Backlog. Instead, create transparency of your prioritization mechanism (e.g., Cost of Delay or Weighted Shortest Job First) and, based on your Power Interest Matrix, invite the most relevant stakeholders into a common prioritization process to reach consensus.