PEOPLE
Highlight what you don’t know
Review what you know and don’t know about people to eliminate gaps in your knowledge and suggest who you need to speak with.
Preview how this activity will begin in this two-minute video from the template. Turn on closed captioning to read instructions in your preferred language.
When considering all the people related to your project, you need to identify the most important unknowns, so you can identify critical gaps in your understanding, but you never have the time to speak to everyone affected or involved.
Why highlight what you don’t know?
Agreeing upon critical assumptions will help everyone focus necessary research on the people that matter most. Speaking with people who know a domain better than you can accelerate your learning with their insider knowledge.
There are different ways to review what you do not know about the people influencing your project. You could:
Draft mini-profiles detailing people’s attitudes and motivations
Perform some desk research
Generate and rank key hypotheses that must be true for your project to work
What makes a good approach? One that:
Involves people who know the domain better than you
Prompts debate and challenges key assumptions
Builds a shared understanding of critical knowledge gaps
Annotates a visual map for all to see
Allows you to plan effectively
We recommend you:
Walk people through a visual map of all the people that matter
Ask people to make additions and challenge assumptions
Highlight the people or assumptions upon which the success of your project hinges
Plan to speak to the people that matter most
What does success look like?
In this example, a product manager at What Could Be shared an initial stakeholder map with two colleagues to get feedback. While overall the map was received well, it was highlighted that more knowledge was necessary around incentives for users of the product.
Are you ready to identify who would provide the most value to talk to?
HOW?
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