Saying No to Stakeholder by Product Owner

A Product Owner’s most important word: “No” & Saying No to a stakeholder is very difficult. Stakeholder management is the process of engaging with these people, and maintaining good relationships with them. You’ll likely be working with people in many different roles, with varying levels of influence over your project.

Make Stakeholders feel heard and understood

The most important part is to make sure your stakeholder feels that their voice has been heard and the request understood. 

Listen Actively while stakeholder proposing their ideas

• Reserve judgement, there will be a reason why this idea is meaningful in the other person’s world
• Don’t interrupt
• Use affirmative body language to show you are paying attention
• Pay attention, don’t think of your next response while the other person is talking
• Paraphrase by repeating what is being said, to show you have listened

e.g. I hear your request, understand the challenges you are facing and you will investigate any possible solution.

Saying No to Stakeholder by explaining the Cost

Explain the impact of making the change.The cost might include:

• The effort to develop this idea gives a poor return on investment
• What you would have to give up to work on this idea instead
• A divergence from the product strategy or roadmap
• A compromise to the overall user experience
• Accrual of technical debt

Be Clear with Stakeholders, Clearly suggest if this is Not No Forever, Just for Now

Be clear about what “no” means, If the feature stakeholder requesting is not feasible or not adding value to product and team will never work on this then don’t keep it open for future discussion. If it is no for now but you can consider for later, then communicate the same to stakeholders. Make sure that it should not be  a yes rather it should be that you will consider it later.

e.g. Thanks for the idea. We really appreciate & requests like these let us know that you’re using and getting value from our app. Our product roadmap and development schedule are pretty well locked in place for the immediate future… but let me put that idea out to our community [or let me place that into our idea parking lot, or let me revisit that as soon as we complete our next release].”

Be Transparent About How You Prioritize

One of the best ways to say no, particularly to an internal stakeholder is to simply explain your product roadmap and walk them through your methodology for prioritizing epics and features for the coming releases. 

How does this idea fit into our long term strategy? 

New requests are viewed as not supporting the strategy unless the requester convinces you that their idea will help reaching significant strategic goals faster.

Spend Time, Express Appreciation and Empathy for Customers

When you are saying no to a request both appreciation on the idea and empathy for the feature they are requesting are very important. Spend time acknowledging the request, explaining to the stakeholder that you understand why they would want or need it, and showing empathy for their situation.

e.g. I appreciate the idea and I can see why this feature is important to you but ….

This is a good idea for a new feature, we’ve actually considered this as a possible addition to the product.” 

Saying No to Stakeholder by providing Facts & Data

The best way to take emotion out of an argument is to present statistics, facts, and data. Let the numbers speak for themselves. 

Offer Only One Reason for Saying No

Provide one compelling reason rather than a list of reasons as a list of reasons will dilute the argument and the weakest reason will be the point of discussion.

Convey that You Each Have the Same Goal

Reminding the customer that you share a common goal helps them understand why you need to say no, even if they still don’t agree fully with the answer.

Saying No to Stakeholder by explaining the Consequences

As a product owners you should explain the consequences of saying yes, this will help the stakeholder understand, and hopefully empathize why you feel saying no. 

e.g. We have limited capacity so which of your requests should I scrap or reprioritized in order to put this into the backlog?

Saying No to Stakeholder by Providing Alternatives

Instead of saying no to a stakeholder, product owner should offer an alternative.you are ready to propose your alternative. Start by saying that you could build Feature Y into the solution. The benefits of building Feature Y are that:

• It would help your stakeholders meet their challenges; and,
• It could be implemented in a much shorter timeframe, or even delivered ahead of the main project go-live date; and,
• It would be much less costly to build and maintain; and,
• It would provide the must have functionality of Feature Z without the extras that won’t be used; also
• It would be a better use of the organization’s resources in-line with the organizational strategy and technology roadmap.

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