When you’re working with a single business stakeholder, projects usually feel neat and aligned with the main goals. If something goes off track, it’s easy to redirect the conversation and get things focused again.
The challenge comes when you add more stakeholders. What works for one department rarely works for another. Goals get diluted, priorities conflict, and the solution gets stretched until it tries to serve everyone…usually badly. On global projects, that tension gets even worse. You either end up building to the lowest common denominator or spinning off completely different systems across regions.
This is why project managers must clearly define the purpose of a project up front, and keep asking if decisions align with that purpose all the way through.
The Widget Story
I once worked on a guided shopping tool for a global brand. The goal was simple: help new customers explore products and find a style that fit them.
At first, everything was on track. The vendor customized features for us, and the business aligned on an approach. Customers could browse curated categories, making it easier to discover styles that matched their preferences.
But once more stakeholders got involved, the feedback shifted:
- “We want customers to browse all 2,500 SKUs.”
- “Add navigation by color.”
- “Let’s mirror internal product categories.”
The tool’s original purpose—guiding new customers to products that fit their identity—was getting lost. We weren’t building a guided experience anymore. We were just recreating the online store in a more complicated way.
What Customers Actually Needed
Here’s the disconnect:
- The business wanted products organized by internal logic (functions, features, categories).
- The customer bought based on style, identity, and lifestyle.
A better approach would have been to build customer profiles based on research; urban vs. suburban, beach city vs. small town, or even music/lifestyle categories like rock, hip-hop, or classical. Products should have been grouped into categories customers related to, not ones the business used internally.
Project managers should always challenge the business stakeholders to make sure that the right tools, strategies and projects are being implemented with the right goals and KPIs in mind. It is the project manager’s job to understand the tools and the objectives and key results that the business is looking to achieve to make sure they align. PMs need to guide the business to get the best implementation possible from the technologies available otherwise you end up with a product that doesn’t meet the initial request. You should constantly be asking yourself “Why did we do this project in the first place and does it still meet the objectives?”
When you let cross-functional stakeholders steer unchecked, you’ll end up with a tool that technically works but fails to deliver on its reason for existing.
Key Points / Takeaways for PMs
- Anchor every decision to the project’s goals. Keep asking: “Why are we doing this?”
- Push back on scope creep and scope drift. More features don’t always mean better outcomes.
- Think like the end user. Business logic isn’t the same as customer experience.
- Guide stakeholders, don’t just follow them. The right implementation matters more than appeasing every request.