Stakeholders
Stakeholders are internal business partners and collaborators who need to be kept informed about and aligned with the product team's discovery work and decisions.
Who Are Stakeholders?
Stakeholders include:
- Leadership and key decision-makers
- Functional teams (sales, customer success, marketing)
- Product and engineering teams who need resources or need to collaborate
- Anyone who either influences product decisions or needs to understand what's being built to do their own work effectively
It's helpful to think of stakeholders in layers, from close to far:
Really Close
Product and engineering teams who need to collaborate directly. Discovery isn't just one team deciding what to build—action only happens when there are resources to build what's been decided.
Middle Layer
Company leadership who need to understand and buy into decisions, especially when work might require resources beyond what's already allocated.
Far Out
Sales, customer success, and marketing teams—"the other side of the fence"—who need to know what's coming so they can do their work effectively.
Why Does Stakeholder Alignment Matter?
It's not enough to do good discovery if you aren't bringing your stakeholders along with you. All the discovery work in the world won't matter if teams can't get their business partners on board.
Stakeholders are partners who:
- Must live with the decisions the product team makes
- Need to be aligned on criteria for what constitutes a good opportunity or impactful solution
- Need to understand the discovery process to support the team's work
How Do You Bring Stakeholders Along?
Discovery is a messy learning process with many twists, turns, and dead-ends. It can be challenging to keep leadership and key stakeholders informed along the way.
The key is bringing stakeholders along throughout the discovery process rather than just presenting final decisions. This means:
- Sharing how decisions are being made
- Getting input on evaluation criteria
- Communicating learning as it happens
- Building buy-in progressively, not all at once
When stakeholders understand the discovery process and see how decisions are made, they're more likely to support the outcomes.
Learn more:
- The Art of Managing Stakeholders Through Product Discovery
- Show Your Work: How to Justify Your Decisions & Get Stakeholder Buy-In
- Product in Practice: Finding the Best Way to Communicate with Different Stakeholders
Related terms:
- Continuous Discovery
- Opportunity Solution Tree
- Strategy
Last Updated: October 25, 2025