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Understand their needs
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Communicate regularly
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Involve them in the process
4
Align your team internally
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Adapt to changes
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Measure and celebrate success
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Here’s what else to consider
Keeping your team aligned with stakeholders and customers is crucial for delivering value, meeting expectations, and fostering collaboration. But how do you achieve and maintain this alignment in a dynamic and complex environment? Here are some tips and practices that can help you and your team stay on the same page with your key partners.
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- Roland Krocin Full Stack Technologist | Technology Leadership, Cloud Platform Engineering, middleware, Fin/DevOps, SRE… 1
1 Understand their needs
The first step to alignment is understanding the needs, goals, and challenges of your stakeholders and customers. You can do this by conducting interviews, surveys, workshops, or other methods of gathering feedback and insights. You should also establish clear and measurable success criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect their desired outcomes and priorities.
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- Roland Krocin Full Stack Technologist | Technology Leadership, Cloud Platform Engineering, middleware, Fin/DevOps, SRE, Cybersecurity, OrgDev
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Knowing your customer is the first step. It should even come before knowing their needs, as this helps you understand the context and motivations behind the needs that your product would ideally fulfill. But don’t think you need to fill every need. Sometimes that’s required, other times additional perspectives are needed. The ideal product portfolio mix is a combination of what users want, what they think they want, and what they didn’t even know they wanted. Getting that mix just right is magic.
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2 Communicate regularly
The second step to alignment is communicating regularly and effectively with your stakeholders and customers. You should keep them informed of your progress, achievements, risks, and issues, and solicit their input and feedback. You should also use various channels and formats, such as email, phone, video, reports, dashboards, or presentations, to suit their preferences and needs. You should also set and manage their expectations and address any concerns or questions they may have.
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3 Involve them in the process
The third step to alignment is involving your stakeholders and customers in the process of planning, designing, testing, and delivering your products or services. You should invite them to participate in workshops, reviews, demos, or user testing sessions, and ask for their opinions and suggestions. You should also co-create solutions with them, and incorporate their feedback and ideas into your iterations and improvements.
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- Elvis Tam Design Leader • Director of UX • Mentor • UX Evangelist • Strategic Thinker • UX Designer • Product Designer • Information Architect • UX Researcher
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This is a great idea. Often times I find that when stakeholders are actively collaborating on a project they start to gain a sense of ownership. This organically leads to growing advocacy and adoption for your project. This helps these types of projects gain more momentum and visibility in the company.
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4 Align your team internally
The fourth step to alignment is aligning your team internally, so that everyone is on the same page with the vision, goals, and strategy of your project or initiative. You should ensure that your team members understand their roles, responsibilities, and expectations, and have the skills, resources, and support they need. You should also foster a culture of collaboration, trust, and accountability within your team, and encourage them to share their knowledge, ideas, and feedback.
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5 Adapt to changes
The fifth step to alignment is adapting to changes that may affect your stakeholders and customers, or your project or initiative. You should monitor the external and internal factors that may impact their needs, goals, or challenges, such as market trends, customer behavior, competitor actions, or organizational changes. You should also be flexible and agile in adjusting your plans, priorities, or processes to accommodate these changes, and communicate them to your stakeholders and customers.
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6 Measure and celebrate success
The sixth step to alignment is measuring and celebrating success with your stakeholders and customers. You should track and report on the results and outcomes of your project or initiative, using the success criteria and KPIs that you agreed on. You should also acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and achievements of your team, stakeholders, and customers, and celebrate the milestones and wins together.
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7 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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- Roland Krocin Full Stack Technologist | Technology Leadership, Cloud Platform Engineering, middleware, Fin/DevOps, SRE, Cybersecurity, OrgDev
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Often products, especially when it comes to products consumed at large organizations, lack the characteristics that enable desired rates of adoption. But some simple guidelines can help fix that. Make the new better and easier. Make the right thing, the easy thing to do. Make users want to use your product because if the ways it makes their day easier and more productive. Reduce friction. Improve happiness. Solve actual and not perceived problems. And never push or force product adoption. The consequences are dire.
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