PMI-ACP Certification: Managing Stakeholder Engagement

Welcome! This is the seventh course out of eight of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This part is on Managing Stakeholder Engagement.

This video will help you understand better the content of the other courses that will form this Agile Project Management - The PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program.

You might know this. I’m adding it to any course in the introductory section. But, just in case, some suggestions to improve your learning.

Understand course content, program structure and learning on Udemy

The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles

An agile project evolves as it progresses, through a continuous process of inspection and adaptation. For this approach to succeed, stakeholders have to participate actively during the course of the development process. Rather than simply making plans and then ensuring the plans are followed, they need to shape a project – and the product it delivers – as work proceeds. So it's vital for an agile project to have a highly engaged project community. 

The commitment levels of the various stakeholders can vary. Stakeholders may show a high level of engagement throughout a project. Or you may have to deal with stakeholders who are reluctant to commit, or who are enthusiastic only at first, becoming less so as a project progresses. A lack of stakeholder engagement can result in delays – for example, with uncommitted stakeholders failing to review features or making vital decisions too late – and compromise a project's overall success. 

In an agile project, one of the project leader's key responsibilities is to keep stakeholders engaged, and to manage the relationship between them and the development team. Actively engaged stakeholders are essential because their contributions help the development team maximize the value a product will have for the customer. 

During the initiation phase, the product owner - or other form of customer proxy - is responsible for establishing the product vision, which is a high-level description of the product that a project will deliver. Its aim is to inspire stakeholders and team members, and to ensure that everyone has a common understanding of the product. 

A release is a delivery of value to the customer which occurs at the end of a project, or at specific intervals during the course of product development. During the release planning phase, the team plans the project work that needs to be completed in order to develop the product and roughly assigns work items or user stories to iterations, based on a prioritized order defined by the customer. 

At the beginning of each development phase, stakeholders may participate in iteration –or sprint – planning. Once an iteration starts, some stakeholders focus only on monitoring the development team's progress. Others are more extensively involved, guiding and advising the team.

During the review and adapt phase, the product team, managers, customer, and sometimes end users and developers from other projects take part in product demonstrations and review meetings. They evaluate the working features produced by the development team in terms of their functionality, value to the customer, and overall quality. They may also provide feedback on the team's performance and the project's status. 

The close phase begins when the development team has completed all product backlog items. Before the product can be released, the project leader needs to send the product owner and other stakeholders a deployment notification. 

Classify members of a project community according to stakeholder types and recognize the actions that engage stakeholders throughout the stages of an agile project

In a traditional project, most decisions are made during initial project planning. But in an agile project, most decisions are made as a project progresses and understanding of a product evolves. For this reason, agile projects depend on fast, effective decisions. An agile project can't afford slow decision-making, because delays in decisions mean delays in the project. 

Once you've framed a decision properly, you need to ensure that everyone you've identified as relevant participates in the decision-making process. For participatory decision-making to work, everyone's opinions first have to be heard and discussed.

This helps ensure that diverse points of view, based on differing areas of expertise, are taken into account – resulting in better final decisions. It also helps build trust in the decision-making process. 

According to the Agile Manifesto, agile methodologies emphasize "working products over comprehensive documentation." This means that functional software is valued more than detailed documentation. But it doesn't mean that documentation is considered unnecessary, or that the need for communication between the team and stakeholders is ignored. 

An agile approach recognizes that a development team doesn't need that much information to get its job done. So by agile standards, such documentation – which goes beyond what's "just enough" – is excessive.

Agile teams document only the information that will help them complete the required work successfully. 

Assessing Organisational Culture

On an agile project, knowledge sharing depends largely on personal interaction and face-to-face communication. Agile practices like pair programming, standup meetings, and the use of on-site customers all encourage the free flow of knowledge between individuals. 

In an agile project, success often depends on accurate information passing from one person to another. Because of this, it's important that access to information is open and free-flowing. Traditional project management involves controlling the flow of information by restricting knowledge to certain people and distributing information on a "need to know" basis.

The main aim of an agile approach to development is to maximize the value that a project delivers to the customer. A project team does this by regularly delivering working software that meets the customer's needs – and by frequently inviting and reacting to feedback from the customer.

An agile team uses specific techniques to gather feedback during release planning, iteration planning, and iteration reviews. 

In an agile project, each iteration ends with an iteration review meeting. During the meeting, the team demonstrates what it has developed to managers, customers, and other stakeholders, and then invites their feedback.

The team members speak about their work on the iteration and the results, and stakeholders have the chance to give direct feedback and ask questions. Developers respond to these immediately, and everyone is free to participate in the discussion.

Identify causes of problems on agile teams and understand strategies for overcoming agile team challenges and Recognize strategies for boosting team performance and understand agile coaching

Course project (optional)

Congratulations for finishing course 7 of 8 of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This course is was on Managing Stakeholder Engagement.

Course wrap-up and overview