I’ve been getting slaughtered by stakeholder requests that keep chipping away at our core product strategy. Last quarter, we had a clean roadmap for workflow automation features, but now it’s become a bloated wishlist with 30+ ‘priority’ items from different departments. I heard FAANG PMs use boundary-setting techniques - anyone have concrete examples of how they maintained focus through stakeholder storms? Specifically, how do you decide which feedback to absorb vs. push back on without burning political capital?
newsflash: your ‘vision’ died the moment you got your first middle manager email that said ‘just a small tweak’. real talk - i keep a screenshot of the original OKRs from q1 and shove it back at every C-suite clown trying to pivot for vanity metrics. works 60% of the time, every time.
pro tip: let marketing add their pet feature, then make engineering estimate 6mo timeline. suddenly their ‘critical’ request becomes negotiable. survival is about weaponizing your dev team’s pessimism.
i made a priority heatmap with eng lead? like red=core vision yellow=maybe later green=stakeholder asks. showed it in sprint planning and VPs actually listened! well except Karen from sales but shes always…
started tagging all requests with ‘strategic alignment score’ from 1-5. when execs see their baby ranked 2/5…oops? works better than saying no directly!
Three techniques that served me well at Google: 1) Implement a ‘North Star Council’ with your most strategic stakeholders meeting quarterly to realign priorities 2) Create a public dependency graph showing how random features delay core objectives 3) Develop template responses for common requests that funnel stakeholders into your existing prioritization process. The key is systemic deflection rather than individual battles.
Every edit shows they care! I frame feedback as ‘future phase opportunities’ and maintain a public idea backlog. Celebrate contributions while guarding the current sprint. Positive framing works wonders!
Had a sales VP demand we add blockchain integration ‘for buzz’. Instead of refusing, I scheduled a technical deep dive where engineers explained the 9-month timeline. Suddenly it became a ‘nice to have’. Sometimes let stakeholders talk themselves out of bad ideas.
Analysis of 47 product launches shows teams using weighted scoring frameworks reduce scope creep by 38%. Recommend implementing RICE scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) with clear thresholds. At Meta, anything below 80/100 automatically gets queued for next fiscal year review unless CTO-approved.