Stakeholders and Business People in Your Project/Product Delivery

It has been amazing Agile journey since 2006 when I applied some general agile practice in my own business. And I have seen lots of advantage when business is small and innovative. And it fits with my personal believe that team output can be gain while empowering people. I had been working as owner, project manager and architecture designer at that time. It all works so perfectly because I always brought lead developer with me to talk with customer. As its nature of business, it is easy to get business people and client together with developers. 

But recent experience with SCRUM has given me headache. Product owner has been go-to person for questions related to business. Product owner decision is representative of both clients and business needs. Communication lost cost is high. And my experience has been that product owner acts as middle man in the case they are accountable for product delivered. I personally believe bring stakeholders including customers into table is one of the solution when product owner has decide priority and core requirement. 

What I am doing at the moment? There are few things: 

1. Identify stakeholders from internal and external in project vision statement
2. Bring stakeholders in grooming sessions to help developers understanding what customer needs
3. Product can decide whether it is in scope or not if developer think some changes may requires huge amount of work

I have been pushing vision statement and identify stakeholders for projects. It has bring lots of value into business in which we don't such doc before. And I haven't try 2,3 yet. And planning to do soon. 

If you have some way to involve stakeholders in discussion both before development and after development, please send me or leave as comment