Stakeholder Assessment

Stakeholder feedback is essential for Agile teams aiming to stay aligned with business goals and ensure that their work meets or exceeds expectations. By regularly conducting a stakeholder assessment survey, Agile teams can gain an outside perspective on their performance, understand the needs and expectations of those they serve, and create a clear path for improvement. Here’s a guide on creating an effective stakeholder survey to ensure the team is aligned with both Agile practices and business goals.
 

Why Conduct a Stakeholder Assessment Survey?

Stakeholders provide unique insights into an Agile team’s output, productivity, and alignment with organizational goals. Feedback from stakeholders helps the team see how well their work resonates with the larger business objectives, enhancing their value to the organization. It also opens up a dialogue on expectations, facilitating a better understanding of what stakeholders need to achieve their own goals and enabling teams to respond proactively.
 

Preparing the Stakeholder Assessment Survey

A well-structured stakeholder survey should be concise, clear, and focused on capturing feedback in critical areas. You can follow these steps to design a survey that will provide the team with actionable insights:

1. Identify Key Objectives: Start by defining what you want the team to learn from this feedback. Common objectives include understanding stakeholder satisfaction with team output, identifying gaps between delivery and expectations, and gaining insights on areas for improvement.
2. Focus on Key Performance Areas: Frame questions around key aspects of team performance that are relevant to the stakeholders’ experience, such as:
   • Quality of Deliverables
   • Timeliness of Delivery
   • Responsiveness and Adaptability
   • Communication and Transparency
   • Value Contribution to Business Goals
3. Use a Balanced Mix of Question Types: Combining rating scales with open-ended questions offers a comprehensive view. Rating scales give a quick snapshot of satisfaction levels, while open-ended questions allow stakeholders to elaborate on specific experiences or concerns.
4. Clarify the Purpose: To encourage meaningful feedback, let stakeholders know that the survey is designed to improve collaboration and better meet their expectations. Communicate that responses are valued and will directly contribute to the team’s continuous improvement.
5. Keep it Brief but Comprehensive: To respect stakeholders’ time, keep the survey brief, ideally taking 5-10 minutes to complete. Avoid redundant questions, but ensure the survey covers all critical feedback areas.

Sample Survey Questions

Here are a few sample questions that cover a range of topics to gather constructive feedback:

• On a scale of 1 (not satisfied) ... 5 (very satisfied), how satisfied are you with the quality of the team’s deliverables?
• How satisfied are you with the current communication ith the team?
• In your opinion, how effectively does the team respond to changes in product requirements or priorities?
• How aligned do you feel the team’s work is with your business objectives?
• What is one thing the team could improve to better meet your needs?

Reviewing and Applying Stakeholder Feedback

Once the feedback is collected, it’s essential to review the results with the team during a retrospective or planning session. Focus on identifying patterns or common themes, then prioritize improvement areas based on feedback. Discussing this feedback together fosters team ownership over their Agile journey and enables them to make adjustments that strengthen their stakeholder relationships.

Using Feedback to Guide Continuous Improvement

Conducting stakeholder assessments periodically helps the team stay responsive to changing business needs and evaluate the effectiveness of previous improvements. With each survey, the team gains a clearer understanding of stakeholder perspectives, aligning their work more effectively with organizational goals and reinforcing a culture of adaptability and continuous improvement.

Stakeholder assessment surveys are a valuable tool for Agile teams, bridging the gap between team efforts and stakeholder expectations. By regularly collecting and acting on external insights, Agile teams can align their work more closely with business objectives, enhance their impact, and continue growing in ways that benefit both the team and the organization.