| name | product-stakeholders |
| description | Map stakeholders, prepare product decisions, resolve alignment risks, and write evidence-based product updates. Use when ownership is unclear, teams disagree, an executive decision is needed, incentives conflict, or the user must communicate trade-offs, status, risks, and asks. |
Product Stakeholders
Create shared understanding around a product decision without substituting consensus for accountable judgment.
Inputs
- Decision, owner, deadline, and reversibility
- Stakeholders, roles, incentives, and authority
- Evidence, alternatives, constraints, and risks
- Current disagreements and communication history
- Required approvals or consultations
Workflow
- Define the exact decision and accountable owner.
- Map who decides, recommends, contributes evidence, must be consulted, and must be informed.
- Identify each stakeholder's goals, constraints, incentives, and likely loss from the decision.
- Separate factual disagreement, interpretive disagreement, value conflict, and ownership ambiguity.
- Prepare a decision packet: context, evidence, alternatives, trade-offs, recommendation, non-goals, and consequences of delay.
- Resolve missing evidence before debating preferences where feasible.
- Make the decision at the appropriate level; record dissent and conditions for review.
- Communicate what changed, why, who owns next actions, and when the decision will be revisited.
Output contract
Return stakeholder map, decision rights, disagreement diagnosis, evidence gaps, decision packet, communication plan, owner-action table, and review trigger.
Quality gate
- One person or body owns the decision.
- Consultation is not confused with veto power.
- Trade-offs and non-goals are visible.
- Dissenting evidence is preserved.
- The update contains a clear ask or next action.
Avoid
- Seeking universal agreement for a reversible decision
- Hiding uncertainty to appear confident
- Using a prioritization score to settle incentive conflicts
- Escalating before clarifying the decision
- Broadcasting status without decisions, risks, or asks
Source grounding
Framework-informed operational guidance using product-team accountability from Inspired, organizational outcome thinking from Escaping the Build Trap, and strategy decision discipline from Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.
