How to work with Stakeholders

A lot of times we wonder who stakeholders are when we talk about project management. There are various ways to gather stakeholders in projects and they vary from one project to another. In this post we will break down how to work with stakeholders when embarking on a project. There are three common stakeholder groups that you might be working with: the executive team, the customer-facing team, and the data science team. Your data analysis should address the business task and open up opportunities for data-driven decision-making. It is your responsibility as a data analyst to understand your stakeholders' expectations.  

The Three Types Of Stakeholders

The Executive Team: 

Strategic and operational planning is conducted by the executive team of the organization. They set goals, develop strategies, and decide how to execute those strategies. Typically, the executive team includes vice presidents, the chief marketing officer, and senior management professionals. Since their time is limited with you, make the most of it by answering their questions in your presentations. You can provide more detailed information in your presentation appendix and project documentation for them to review after the meeting.

Customer-Facing Team:

Customer-facing team includes anyone who interacts with customers and potential customers. Don't be swayed by asks from your stakeholders to find certain patterns that might not exist. Data analysis and presentation should focus on what is actually in the data, not what your stakeholders hope to find.

Data Science Team:

It takes teamwork for data to be organized within a company especially when you share results from individual analysis, you uncover the bigger picture of different scenarios which a lot of your job will depend on using the data in new ways. You may have to work alongside other data analysts, data scientists, or data engineers. Normally, data scientists work alongside other analysts, scientists, engineers, and even engineers. You might study data on employee productivity, while another researcher looks at hiring statistics.

Effective communication with stakeholders

The following tips will help you communicate clearly, establish trust, and present your findings to each group of stakeholders - from the executive team to the customer-facing team and the data science team.

Be ready to say NO at all times: Organizing data within a company takes teamwork.  If you're a data scientist, you'll find yourself working with other data analysts, data scientists and engineers. You might look into the data on employee productivity, while another analyst looks at hiring data. When you share what you find in your individual analyses, you uncover the bigger story. A big part of your job will be to find new angles of the data to explore. There's a good chance you'll find yourself working with other data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers. 

Communicate Effectively: Your stakeholders will want regular updates on your projects. Share notes about project milestones, setbacks, and changes. Then use your notes to create a shareable report. A change-log is a chronologically ordered list of modifications made to a project. Depending on the way you set it up, stakeholders can even pop in and view updates whenever they want.

Begin with visuals and words: It is common for data analysts and stakeholders to get stuck in an illusion of agreement. To help avoid this, start with a description and a quick visual of what you are trying to convey. Work with stakeholders to make changes and improvements from there. The faster everyone agrees, the faster you can perform the first analysis and implement changes.

In this post we have been able to show you how to work with stakeholders in a project, how to effectively work as a team by communicating effectively, using visuals and words to express your findings, be opinionated and firm about your decisions but giving room for others to air their opinion as well.