You meet with Shirley and ask her to identify anybody she thinks will be impacted by the new portal. She immediately lists patients, doctors, and nurses. You suggest the scheduling and billing departments since the portal will automate or replace some of their work. Shirley agrees, then mentions that the Marketing VP$,$ Dave, might be interested since he controls branding and is looking for ways to gather more patient data. The list keeps growing.

Then you discuss how much influence each of these stakeholders has on your project, and their current level of support. Some are positive, many are neutral, and some are actively opposed. You draft engagement strategies to increase support or to overcome resistance.

You then 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. 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.