Australia 
Kathy G. will be presenting the following session
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keyboard_arrow_downKathy G. Berkidge - The Stakeholder Engagement Canvas
90 Mins
Workshop
Intermediate
Stakeholder engagement is critical in agile projects. Agile project managers, business analysts, product owners, Scrum masters as well as agile teams must plan their approach to collaborate well with stakeholders and build productive working relationships.
While there are many tools and techniques to perform stakeholder analysis, we need to analyse the mindset of our stakeholders – a deeper level of analysis – to understand how they might view various situations, and how we can best respond to them.
We must also be willing to look within ourselves to understand how our behaviour, words and actions may be perceived to identify how to build rapport while avoiding conflict and misunderstanding. This is where mindfulness is needed.
This workshop will explore the ‘Stakeholder Engagement Canvas’, a new tool that helps us perform a more thoughtful and insightful level of stakeholder analysis. The canvas allows us to examine the stakeholder’s needs and attitudes in depth to enable us to better plan and monitor the engagement process, along with how we can be more mindful working with them. Kathy will present how to use this canvas to cultivate effective stakeholder engagement.
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1. What got you started/interested in modern software development methods?
It was a new website project that was not delivering value, resulting in unhappy stakeholders. I had heard of agile, SCRUM, so we tried a few practices and found the development process worked well. Importantly, our stakeholders were very pleased in seeing continuous progress.
2. What do you think is the biggest challenge faced by the software product engineering community today?
Management trying too many different agile frameworks in an attempt to do more work with less staff, thinking they are being agile because they use the right terminology and tools, but not understanding the core of the agile mindset.
3. What do you think are the most exciting developments in software product engineering today?
User Centered Design and the focus on User / Customer Experience.
4. Why did you choose the topic(s) you will be speaking about at the conference?
Over my career, I see the lack of stakeholder engagement a fundamental issue in delivering successful projects. The existing tools and techniques are good, but lacked something. I developed the Stakeholder Engagement Canvas to enable a more thoughtful way to plan and monitor stakeholder engagement incorporating mindfulness and self-reflection.
5. What are some of the key takeaways from your session(s) at Agile India?
Looking deeper and stakeholder engagement, the importance of mindfulness when engagement with stakeholders, and how to use the Stakeholder Engagement Canvas.
6. Which sessions are you particularly looking forward to attending at Agile India this year?
Joy of Agility by Joshua Kerievsky
How to talk to the Elephant by Linda Rising
7. Any personal remarks/message you want to share with the software community?
Agile is more than practices and processes - focus on your mindset and be more mindful in your work with others.
