How can you manage stakeholder expectations during a TI project?

1. Gaining trust and identifying the key stakeholders who can make decisions. 2. Defining clear scope, timelines, roadmap, budget, challenges, options, goals, setting realistic expectations and getting their buy-in before the initiation of the project. 3. Setting clear open lines of communication, keeping the stakeholders with the project's progress, challenges, and reports. 4. Presenting summary of the progress, achievements, challenges in the weekly management meetings. 5. Never give surprises to stakeholders, inform the events upfront, and come up with options to choose from, for solving the challenges. 6. Get the stakeholders feedback and their input on regular basis. 7. Training and support to stakeholders using the new technology.

What makes Innovation projects different is that, by definition, there are a lot of unknowns to manage. Stakeholders might not understand the value or the benefits. Implementers might not have the knowledge / experience (and it might be hard to come by). Timelines are hard to predict when there is little experience of similar projects. And so on. So communicating unknowns and how you intend to manage them is absolutely key to putting stakeholders' minds at ease. Secondly, get people excited! Make it a fantastic journey for them with a pot of gold waiting at the end of the project!

Again, the advice on the left is fine for any project. In TI projects, you have to be aware of heightened concerns around the unknowns and lack of experience around that innovation. Spend more time with stakeholders explaining both the benefits and how and why exactly the project will achieve them. Your biggest risk with TI projects is inexperience on all sides. Make sure you have top expertise onboard and make sure you convince your stakeholders that you are aware of and properly managing all the unknowns.

One type of conflict that TI projects can experience in particular, could be between old processes and the new ones that the innovation brings in. People intuitively resist change for many psychological reasons. A lot of things depend on process continuity, chiefly the people following them, but also people who indirectly depend on them (e.g. end-users). So managing resistance to change is important at every level. Avoid such conflicts by taking people along that journey from the beginning. Avoid surprising them with change. Being part of the process early can turn people who would block a new process into champions of it instead.

Also make room for experimentation. In innovation projects, assumptions are more likely to not turn out as expected and unexpected situations arise more easily. The team and the project plan have to allow for some trial&error, running short technology spikes to illuminate unknowns and clarify questions, research on different ways to solve a problem, changing technology options, or simply to get implementers familiarised and immersed in the innovative field they still need to learn about.

Leverage facilitation techniques. Often to get stakeholders invested, we host all participants in a fun neutral venue to review charters or critical plans as a way to move stakeholders forward in reaching collaborative decisions.