All Aboard! Creating a Unified Team with Stakeholders & Vendors

A new project comes in, you’re excited to hit the ground running, the kickoff meeting is here, and then—you discover you’re facing two (or more!) stakeholders with diametrically opposed priorities.

You start supporting a new client, the development team gets their local environments set up, and progress is being made. Just when you think you’re in the clear, you find out there’s another vendor “behind the scenes” whose work sometimes conflicts with yours.

We’ve all been there. What starts out as a straightforward project or support client with clear KPIs and scope of work can turn sideways in an instant when additional parties are introduced. How can you keep things on time, on budget, and keep everyone happy?

There’s a delicate balance, a tight-rope we have to walk sometimes when managing these types of engagements. Drawing on experience from multi-stakeholder projects like Habitat for Humanity and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), we’ll cover some of the common pitfalls that accompany clients who bring multiple stakeholders or third-party vendors to the table—and how to avoid them:

• How to approach department heads with different priorities
• Avoiding “too many cooks in the kitchen” for major decisions
• How to standardize with in-house or vendor developers lacking best practices
• Managing multiple vendors tasked to work on one project
• How to deal with a lack of clarity around ownership of tasks

Attendees will benefit most if they have experience managing projects or maintenance programs. We recommend this session for various roles, including project managers, business analysts, digital strategists, and lead developers.

About the Presenters

Kelly Dassing is a Customer Success Manager at Mediacurrent and has been in client services for Drupal projects for over 5 years. Kelly is a Certified Scrum Product Owner and serves as primary point of contact for both client stakeholders and development teams for Habitat for Humanity, Mercy College, and University of Georgia, among others.

Jen Slemp brings high energy and a diverse skillset to her role as Senior Digital Strategist at Mediacurrent. Jen is a Certified Scrum Product Owner - as a seasoned strategist, she works to help clients like NOAA and Georgia Tech get the most ROI from their Drupal websites.