Stakeholder Management
What is stakeholder management?
Stakeholder management involves keeping various stakeholders—including leadership, sales, engineering, customer success, and marketing teams—informed about discovery work and aligned on product decisions. Effective stakeholder management means adapting communication formats to each stakeholder group's needs, sharing discovery learnings transparently, and bringing stakeholders along on the discovery journey to ensure buy-in.
Discovery is a messy learning process with many twists, turns, and dead-ends. Without effective stakeholder management, even great discovery work can go to waste if teams can't get buy-in from the people who need to support their product decisions.
Who are the key stakeholders product teams need to manage?
Product teams typically need to manage multiple layers of stakeholders, from close collaborators to more distant groups. The closest layer includes the product and engineering teams who work together daily. The next layer is company leadership who set outcomes and allocate resources.
Further out are teams like sales, customer success, and marketing—groups that need to understand and support new products but aren't directly involved in building them. Each stakeholder group has different needs and preferences for how they want to receive information.
How do teams manage stakeholders effectively?
The most effective approach is to bring stakeholders along throughout the discovery process rather than trying to get buy-in after decisions are made. This means sharing discovery learnings consistently and adapting communication formats to what each stakeholder group needs.
Tools like opportunity solution trees help simplify stakeholder management by creating a shared visual that shows what the team is learning and why they're making specific decisions. Setting clear decision criteria upfront—working with stakeholders to define what constitutes a "big enough" opportunity or an impactful solution—guards against second-guessing and "Monday-morning quarterbacking" later.
Learn more:
- The Art of Managing Stakeholders Through Product Discovery
- Show Your Work: How to Justify Your Decisions & Get Stakeholder Buy-In
- Engaging Stakeholders with Opportunity Solution Trees: 3 Tactics to Try
Related terms:
- Stakeholders
- Opportunity Solution Tree
- Product Trio
- Continuous Discovery
Last Updated: October 25, 2025