Feature image taken from the course, Effective Stakeholder Collaboration For Scrum Teams
Many Scrum Teams think that they are building understanding of their stakeholders by creating personas, empathy maps and a stakeholder map, including stakeholders in workshops, and having stakeholders attend their Sprint Reviews.
The thing is, doing all of these things does not really guarantee that Scrum Teams will have a shared understanding with their stakeholders.
The Illusion of Understanding
Many Scrum Teams treat understanding their stakeholder needs as a checkbox exercise. A persona finished - check. A workshop to create a stakeholder map completed - tick. A well attended Sprint Review wrapped up - done. The Scrum Team thinks that they are aligned with their stakeholders.
Understanding stakeholder needs isn’t a series of activities to be completed, it’s an approach Scrum Teams should carry into every conversation, every meeting and every Sprint. It’s noticing when a stakeholder hesitates, when they push back, when they are silent and getting to the meaning behind their words. It involves understanding their motivations and constraints that drive their behaviours. This means building empathy.
This is not something you can measure. You have to observe, question, interpret, and adapt in real time. This can feel messy, but it is human. For Scrum Teams, this can be an uncomfortable, inconvenient truth. Collaborating with stakeholders would be so much easier if we were dealing with machines that have clear inputs and outputs rather than humans!
Empathy as an Ongoing Practice
Tools like empathy maps and personas help Scrum Teams slow down, test their assumptions and have conversations about stakeholders. Many teams do this as a single activity at the start of an initiative and the artifacts go into a drawer, never to be referred to again.
Stakeholders don’t stay static. Contexts change, pressures shift, perceived risks change and priorities alter in the ever-changing environment that Scrum Teams and stakeholders operate in. A stakeholder who was supportive last quarter may suddenly become resistant, not because they are difficult, but because something in their context has changed.
Stakeholder understanding, in this sense, is perishable. If it isn’t constantly refreshed through real interaction and reflection, it quickly becomes outdated.
Understanding Without Action is Not Collaboration
Understanding stakeholders is not the goal. Collaborating effectively with them is.
Scrum Teams sometimes think that they understand their stakeholders, yet continue to interact with them in exactly the same way. The way that the Sprint Review is conducted doesn’t change. Other interactions don’t change. Decisions don’t change. All while frustrations and unmet needs continue!
If a Scrum Team’s interactions with their stakeholders doesn’t create mutual understanding and influence decision making, then this is not collaboration, and I would even consider it to be a waste of everyone’s time.
Scrum Teams show understanding and empathy with their stakeholders when they are capable of:
- Changing how and when they engage with certain stakeholders
- Adjusting their communication and negotiation style
- Understanding stakeholder behaviours, and the needs and motivations that drive those behaviours
- Addressing misunderstandings early instead of letting it surface as conflict
It is in these areas where many Scrum Teams struggle.
Why Understanding Stakeholders Matters
Modern product development operates in environments of constant change and competing priorities. This is not just in the work of product development itself, but in the reality of the accountabilities that stakeholders have that many Scrum Teams rarely see directly. For example, organisational finances, shareholder pressure, regulatory demands and organisational politics to name a few.
When Scrum Teams fail to understand their stakeholders at this deeper level, collaboration breaks down and trust becomes eroded. Micromanagement might take over and the Scrum Team may end up reacting to demand instead of shaping outcomes.
This is not a failure of Scrum. It is a failure to recognise that stakeholder collaboration is an essential skill in order for Scrum to be effective, and it is a skill that requires practice, reflection, and deliberate improvement.
Beyond the Stakeholder Map and Towards Capability
As the creators of the new self-guided learning course, Effective Stakeholder Collaboration For Scrum Teams, Glaudia Califano and I, together with Scrum.org, created something that teaches and encourages Scrum Teams to acquire the skills and toolkit to really build understanding with their stakeholders. The course goes beyond theory to actually applying it. Course takers learn how to adapt their collaboration strategies to real situations, real people and real constraints.
Observing behaviour and understanding context isn’t enough by itself. Collaboration means adapting your strategy and communication styles, asking the right questions, reacting with empathy, facilitating alignment when priorities collide and negotiating when constraints conflict.
We designed the course to give people a place to practice in this space through situational exercises that simulate the unpredictability of real stakeholder interactions. It’s about learning to notice patterns, interpret them, and respond effectively. The goal is not perfect understanding. The goal is better collaboration, stronger relationships, and shared ownership of outcomes.
When Scrum Teams focus on improved stakeholder understanding and collaboration, things change. Stakeholder conversations become more productive. Misunderstandings surface earlier. Conflicts become easier to navigate rather than something to avoid. Stakeholders that used to pull in opposite directions start to coalesce around shared goals. And Scrum Teams aren’t just delivering work for the stakeholders, they are partners with the stakeholders in achieving outcomes that actually matter build more valuable products.
Tools like empathy maps are useful. But don’t mistake the map for the territory where the real work of collaboration happens.