You form a development team and meet with Shirley to analyze the requirements backlog. You develop a plan for a release in six months, with three-week sprints to incrementally deliver the features. A review at the end of each sprint will ensure that the team and Shirley stay on the same page about what is done and what you should build next.

The first sprint implements a basic user interface and workflow. The team is proud of their work and show it to some friends working on an unrelated project. A few weeks later you get a call from Dave - the Marketing VP - who tells you there are standards for branding, colors, fonts, and layout for any patient-facing system. You are six weeks into your project and it looks like you will need to re-do half of that work. You also hear that the call center manager, whom you have never met, is actively campaigning against your project to protect their jobs. Shirley is upset and you both wonder who else will surprise you.

Before the next sprint you decide to analyze everyone impacted by, or who can influence the success of, your project. You create a matrix with a strategy to engage the most influential stakeholders.

You create a steering team and promise Shirley that you will focus on communications. Everyone seems too busy for more meetings and emails, so what do you do?

You define a communications plan for each stakeholder group that includes a combination of meetings, reports, and other "push" information. Shirley worries that you are asking for too much interaction with busy people, but you defend your plan.

To be efficient, you decide on a communications strategy of written status reports to your steering team and a project web site to keep everyone else informed, with a link for feedback and questions. Shirley supports this approach.