Any tips or tricks that you’ve found particularly effective when facing conflicting priorities from different stakeholders? How do you prioritize stakeholder needs while also ensuring the well-being and sustainability of your team?

I often remind project managers that their role isn't to say no but to guide and facilitate decision-making. Presenting options and their impacts allows stakeholders to make informed choices. For example, asking which priority to tackle first and outlining the consequences of each option helps stakeholders see the obvious path forward. This approach reduces pressure on the project manager and leads to quality outcomes.

Communication and transparency are essential. It's important for stakeholders to understand each other's priorities and how they fit into the overall project timeline. By facilitating this understanding, we can work through conflicts effectively.

Our organization is highly collaborative and consensus-driven, which can lead to delays as we wait for every key person to align with decisions. We report these delays in our status updates, making it clear to stakeholders what is holding up progress. While this approach can lead to project stoppages, it's part of our culture. Coming from a different background, like Microsoft, adapting to this higher education environment has been a learning experience, but we manage by absorbing these delays.

Whether using a waterfall or agile approach, aligning on scope and expectations upfront is crucial. This alignment helps define how priorities will be managed, allowing the process to guide decisions. I like to present information in group settings, such as project kick-offs, to address conflicting priorities collectively. By laying out options with descriptions, pros and cons, and cost and timeline impacts, the best choice often becomes apparent without needing to advocate for a specific option. This method encourages alignment and reduces conflicts of interest.