Balancing competing priorities from various stakeholders when developing internal-facing technology can be a challenge. Each stakeholder group has its own needs and expectations, making it difficult to satisfy everyone without a strategic approach. 19 Forbes Technology Council members suggest tips for managing competing stakeholder priorities. They recommend embracing collaboration, prioritizing investments based on results, communicating openly, embracing a long-term portfolio strategy, prioritizing with a strategic framework, and assessing dependencies.
One crucial tip is to establish a clear and transparent prioritization framework rooted in organizational goals and input from relevant stakeholders. By scoring features based on their impact on strategic objectives, teams can make informed decisions aligning with the company’s broader vision. Ruthlessly prioritizing must-haves, being transparent about selection criteria, and using outcome-oriented metrics, such as cost reduction or increased shipping velocity, can help make trade-offs easier on a level playing field. Prioritizing features based on the value they bring to the business, employees, and more, can help align them with strategic priorities.
Finding common ground among stakeholders by uniting them around a single objective is key to gaining buy-in from across departments. Adopting a principle-driven approach on scalability, security, and user-centric design, and letting data drive decision-making can help transcend individual stakeholder demands in favor of solutions that best serve the organization’s operational needs. Implementing teams focused on stakeholder engagement and prioritizing streamlining workflows, while understanding customers’ needs, can help balance competing priorities efficiently.
Regular stakeholder meetings, an agile framework for iterative progress reviews, and a robust governance mechanism are also essential to managing competing priorities in internal tech development. Encouraging empathy among stakeholders by helping them understand and appreciate each other’s perspectives and priorities can lead to more collaborative decision-making. By aligning tech development with the voice of the customer, organizations can gain a competitive advantage, foster deep customer loyalty, and dynamically adapt to evolving market pressures and challenges.
