Product Stakeholder Management

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Navigating the Influence Landscape for a Focused Backlog

Whether you're a new Product Owner or a seasoned product manager, managing stakeholders is core to your product backlog management. If you don't know who you're building for — and how much they matter — your backlog risks becoming a chaotic list of requests rather than a focused path toward delivering value.

In the Professional Scrum Product Backlog Management Skills (PSPBMS) class, we explore how Product Owners collaborate, prioritize, and refine backlog items with stakeholders.

Let's make sure you have the basics before we dive deeper together in class.

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Who are "Stakeholders"?

A stakeholder is anyone who can directly or indirectly affect or can be affected by, have interest in, can influence or can be influenced by your product. This includes:

• Customers
• End users
• Executives
• Sales & Marketing
• Developers
• Designers
• Regulators
• Investors
• Partners

Even your Scrum Team members (like Developers or Scrum Masters) can be stakeholders in some contexts!

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Identifying Your Stakeholders

Use these questions to brainstorm:

• Who funds or approves the product?
• Who uses the product (daily or occasionally)?
• Who complains or praises?
• Who helps or blocks development?
• Who sells or markets it?
• Who supports or maintains it?

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Stakeholder Mapping (Using Real Frameworks)

Once you identify stakeholders, map them using one of these simple stakeholder management models:

1. Power–Interest Grid (Mendelow Matrix)

This classic framework helps you prioritize your stakeholders based on how much power (influence) and interest (stake) they have in your product.

High Power	Keep Satisfied (Latents)	Manage Closely (Promoters)
Low Power	Monitor (Audience)	Keep Informed (Defenders)

2. RACI Matrix

• Responsible – Does the work (e.g., Developers)
• Accountable – Owns the outcome (e.g., Product Owner)
• Consulted – Gives input (e.g., Legal, Marketing)
• Informed – Needs updates (e.g., Senior leaders)

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Step 3: Stakeholder Management in Practice

1. Build Empathy Maps
   Learn what they see, think, feel, do — especially useful during backlog refinement.
2. Use Personas
   We teach this in PPDV (Product Problem Discovery & Validation) — build realistic personas that represent stakeholder clusters.
3. Visualize with Impact Maps or Opportunity Trees
   These tools connect stakeholder needs to features in the backlog.
4. Schedule Regular Syncs
   Promoters may need weekly updates, while Audience may just need a monthly digest.
5. Capture Feedback in PBIs
   Convert stakeholder ideas, concerns, or goals into backlog items — validated and prioritized collaboratively.

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What You'll Practice in the PSPBMS Class

In the workshop, you'll:

• Map real stakeholders
• Turn stakeholder needs into refined PBIs
• Use AI tools (like ChatGPT) to summarize and prioritize stakeholder input
• Use Personas, and Empathy Maps live with templates

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Summary

• Identify your key stakeholders
• Map them using an appropriate framework
• Decide how often & how deeply to engage
• Use tools (like empathy maps) to turn needs into backlog items
• Revisit stakeholder maps every few Sprints

This article is part of AgileWoW's Pre-Workshop Learning Series.