Build Your Influence by Giving Project Homework

Building influence in a project is tough. Last week we shared how assigning homework is a great way to find alignment, take ownership, and help stakeholders feel included. In case you missed it, check out last week’s article here.

Here are a few of our most valuable homework assignments that achieve huge wins:

• Project Kick-off Questions. These go a long way towards framing the problem space early on in a project and can achieve alignment without having a long meeting. We shared the questions we typically ask in our projects last week.
• Stack Ranking Concepts. We use a document to simply list out concepts we want to explore, and then ask stakeholders to rank them based on the business value and technical feasibility. We bring a user perspective into this discussion by leveraging Helio to concept test with their customers! Help your stakeholders take ownership of the concepts in this way.
• Timebox the Feedback. Keep a good pace by timeboxing the feedback a stakeholder needs to give to inform the next discussion. We encourage spending no more than 20 minutes offline to give their two cents on what we’ve presented.

There are many ways to get a stakeholder invested in projects through homework. Getting them excited about homework will help inform and move your discussions to amazing outcomes.

Aligning with your stakeholders is a big part of any successful project, and an even bigger part is getting to your customers in an effective way. Before you can reach your customers, you need to know the channels to get to them through and more importantly: who they are. Join the conversation by telling us how you define your customers today!

Go win your day,
Morgan & The Helio Team