Why you need stakeholders interviews in your user research plan
You’re starting a new project. It’s thrilling, exciting, a blank slate to make an impact in the world and change real people’s lives for the better. You enter the remote kick-off meeting with nervous anticipation, ready to learn all you can from the project stakeholders, and perhaps even meet them for the first time.
First, a high level overview of the project. Words like user-friendly, innovative, efficiency and reusability are flying at you as you counter with probing questions and furiously note down every word. These are important people with limited time, after all. Every bit of information you can get is key to success.
As the meeting winds down — it hits you — you’re less clear on the problem statement and desired outcomes than you were before. You’re left with a blank stare and a long list of hopes, dreams, risky assumptions and high expectations. How can my team accomplish all of these things? Where do we start? What’s the highest priority, and more importantly, why?
Enter The Stakeholder Interview, a surefire method to zero in on business value, accelerate discovery and set up your product for success.
The Stakeholder Interview
Stakeholder interviews are one-on-one interviews with carefully selected stakeholders to learn about outcomes, priorities, risks, and much more. It’s a simple and effective way to focus-in on what matters, what might get in the way, and ensure alignment across business groups.
This method provides a lightning fast way to
- Target business value
- Drill down to highest business priority
- Understand the why
- Reveal constraints
- Surface risks
- Avoid pitfalls
- Understand the players
- Gain support
- Establish communication channels
- Develop a rapport
In this article, I’ll give you the what, why and how of the stakeholder interview method that works for me, so you can experiment on your project, and make it work for you.
Make it one-on-one
At most of the companies I’ve worked with, stakeholders are accustomed to 20+ person meetings where only two to three people speak out. Scheduling a meeting with an individual can be a new concept to grasp and people may get nervous if they feel others are excluded. Nonetheless, it’s important to hold fast to your conviction to interview stakeholders individually in order to avoid the dreaded HiPPO syndrome where the “highest paid person’s opinion” is the only one you hear.
In large group meetings, hierarchy of position or status inhibits honest conversation. People are afraid to disagree or ask valuable questions at the risk of “looking stupid”. There may be a hesitancy to bring up real concerns and performance pressures can cause people to stay quiet. People also tend to paint a rosy picture or avoid discussing past failures with valuable lessons learned.
Only hearing from one or two individuals puts the success of your product at risk as other stakeholders may not be aligned and may get in the way down the road. It’s also possible that stakeholders believe they are in agreement but in fact have very different ideas of what the product should accomplish.
A safe space
One-on-one interviews provide a safe space to talk turkey, spill the tea, or get the dirt on what’s really going on. Establishing an honest and direct line of communication early will be advantageous to your team in the future when difficult conversations need to be had.
Establish honest and direct communication early
Beyond the substantive benefits of a one-on-one conversation, stakeholders are just busy people with lots to do. It can be next to impossible to get this group into another meeting. To dig into the details, a short — one-on-one — interview is more convenient as you can work around their schedule.
I like to announce this strategy as a “next steps” of sorts at the end of project kick-off. “We’ll be reaching out to some of you for individual interviews to dig deeper into the details of the upcoming work.” Make sure to reinforce the one-on-one intention through the meeting event description so it doesn’t get forwarded to a larger group.
Note: One-on-one doesn’t necessarily mean just one interviewer. It’s advantageous to bring other team members for direct exposure and note-taking. If you don’t have a note-taker, recording the session can be a good way to help you focus on interviewing without having to remember every word.
Identify the right people
Like any research, it’s important to scope it down to what’s both manageable and critical. It’s tempting to speak with anyone and everyone that raises their hand, however, drowning in opinions is the quickest way to analysis-paralysis and a longer than necessary discovery. Scheduling (and rescheduling) challenges are usually unavoidable, so in this case less = more.
Research into business value also conforms to the law of diminishing returns. To move rapidly toward product definition and delivery, be intentional in identifying true product stakeholders.
True product stakeholders have some skin in the game. They’re in a position of decision making power, and can be both a barrier and an advocate to success. The stakeholders for your product are not directly involved in the day to day, but are not so far removed that you only hear from them once every few months. For this research method, we’ll also want to filter out subject matter experts (SMEs), who have a vital purpose, but with whom we’ll take a different research approach.
“Stakeholder” is a term with a different definition depending on who you ask, so simply asking who the stakeholders are might not get you pointed to the right people. Instead, ask the following:
Who (outside of the core team) is...
- A key decision maker
- Invested in the outcome
- Has the right of refusal
- An advocate for the team
- Can provide essential context
After you have a list of names that fall into these categories, you may want to create a stakeholder map to visualize their organizational roles, motivations, and relationships to each other. Either way, narrow the list down to the three to six people that fit these descriptions the closest, and cram a meeting invite into their packed calendar ASAP.
Ask the right questions
Now that you have interviews on the schedule, it’s time to focus on the content of your interview. Asking the right questions is the most important component of each stakeholder interview, as it’s essential to setting up both your product and your team for success. Not only will it help drive the definition of outcomes, metrics, risks and mitigations — but it will also allow your team to strategically align to broader portfolio or company objectives and key results.
Strategically align to broader portfolio or company objectives and key results
A stakeholder’s time and attention is a sparse commodity. If you’re able to nail them down to an interview, you’ll want to ensure you’re properly prepared with a carefully designed interview script to keep you on track. A script will also aid in keeping questions consistent, so you can effectively compare and evaluate the data you collect. Asking the same questions in each interview helps to discover misalignment and create an impartial and accurate representation of wants and needs.
Identify risky assumptions
One strategy to ensure you’re asking the right questions, is to identify the riskiest assumptions your team has — and ask about them. Assumptions are things we believe to be true but that are not based on facts or evidence. Risky assumptions are those that — if not true — could cause the product to fail.
It should be said that not all assumptions are best researched through stakeholder interviews. Many assumptions may be better investigated through user research, technical discovery, or subject matter expertise. If research to collect evidence on high risk assumptions isn’t part of your process already, I highly suggest you give it a try.
For the purposes of stakeholder interviews, identify assumptions that stakeholders might help clarify, and keep them in mind for your stakeholder interview script.
Get a balanced team perspective
The next strategy to employ in crafting an interview script is the beautifully unique perspectives of your team members. Just as each person serves an important function in building the product, different perspectives help to make sure you’re covering all angles.
Employ the beautifully unique perspectives of your team
Get your team in a room, set a timer, and ask them to individually write down what they want to learn from stakeholders. Afterwards, affinity map the results, discuss, and group common themes. Together with high risk assumptions, you’ll be left with an excellent outline to begin crafting your interview script.
Use past experiences
Lastly, when it comes to asking the right questions, I turn to my past experience to make sure I’m not missing any crucial areas. After years of employing this method, I’ve come up with a list to consider for any stakeholder interview. Not every one yields a goldmine, but each has generated valuable insights for me at one point or another.
Have you included questions to help you discover…
- Their responsibilities and how it applies to the product
- Relevant past experience (many stakeholders have climbed the company ladder and have a wealth of past experience to draw from. This could both aid and taint their perspective, but good to know either way.)
- The problem statement
- Expected outcomes (what will change for the business)
- Biggest pain points
- Top priorities, and top priority (notice the singular, and make them choose one)
- Metrics that define success
- What NOT to do
- Risks / bottlenecks / gotchas
- How they’ll support the team
- Preferred to communicate logistics
What your team needs to learn from stakeholders will change depending on the situation so, of course, use your best judgment when it comes to what’s important and what’s not.
Craft a thoughtful guide
Now that you know what you want to learn, it’s time to craft your interview script. 30 to 45 minutes may be all the time a stakeholder can give, so you’ll want to use the time wisely. Cadence, voice, tone, and even individual words can matter when it comes to a successful stakeholder interview.
Stakeholders can approach new products with a certain amount of apprehension based on previous negative experiences or skepticism of the process. This won’t necessarily go away after an interview, but confidence in driving the interview can set the groundwork to a good working relationship.
To drive the interview effectively, I structure my script in 5 parts
- Set up
- Warm up
- Big picture
- The Details
- Wrap up
1. Set up
Set the context before diving in. Let them know who you are and what your goals are. It will focus their thoughts down to what’s most relevant for your team. Let them know you’re here to learn about their goals and that you’re not collecting requirements. Inform them that you’ll be doing the same with other stakeholders and although a summary will be shared back with the team, individual statements will be kept confidential. Establish that you’ll leave time for them to ask questions at the end.
2. Warm up
Get the interview started with the softball questions. Use this time to learn about them and establish a rapport by making eye contact and gestures of acknowledgement. Keep it conversational and casual. Show them that you’re listening and interested in what they have to say. This will set them and ease, and get them used to talking and speaking honestly.
3. The Big Picture
Start with big picture questions. Not only will you learn about what’s valuable to the business at a high level, but you’ll also set the stage for thinking beyond requirements. Don’t forget to dig into the why beyond the what.
4. The Details
Here’s where you learn about wants, needs, and expectations specific to your product. It’s the meat of the interview, where you’ll get the most insight. Non-leading questions are a good rule of thumb, although some questions can be better direct. Remember, Stakeholders can be on the “business side” and not exposed to the same language you’re used to. Use words with clear meanings that will make sense to them.
5. Wrap up
End the interview on a strong note by wrapping it up and tying it with a bow. It’s here where they have a chance to ask questions, so be ready to give them the confidence they’re looking for in your process. If they don’t ask for what comes next (though they usually do), make sure you provide them with tactical next steps for your team, including sharing back what you heard, setting an agreement for your next communication, and thanking them for their time and perspective.
Restate what you heard
It may seem unimportant or even redundant to share back with stakeholders what you learned from your research. After all, they’re the ones who gave you the information in the first place. Even so, you may be surprised at what stakeholders can learn by hearing what their colleagues had to say.
There’s magic in bringing it all together
It’s probable that the stakeholders have not previously had these candid conversations with each other and although they’ve heard things in bits and pieces, there’s magic in bringing it all together to tell a compelling story.
Sharing a summary of what you’ve learned is an opportunity to check-in that your team is on the right track and expose any mis-alignment found. The important thing is that the team truly understands what the business is looking for and stakeholders are aligned with the plan to get there.
I usually share a summary from stakeholder interviews along with insights from user and technical research. Ideally the story ends in a product roadmap with outcomes, success metrics, risks and mitigations — all strategically aligned to the broader company mission and goals.
Once you’ve reached alignment, go forth, make an impact, change lives. And lather rinse and repeat… as needed.
