What Enterprise Product Management Taught Me About Stakeholder Alignment

3 MINS

# What Enterprise Product Management Taught Me About Stakeholder Alignment

In enterprise product management, you're rarely building for just one user. There's the end user, the buyer, the IT team that needs to integrate it, and the executives who approved the budget. Each has different priorities.

Getting alignment across these groups is half the job.

The Reality of Multiple Stakeholders

At Gabriels Technology Solutions, I managed accounts for our CRM and lead generation platforms. Every client had their own internal politics. Marketing wanted more automation. Sales wanted simpler workflows. IT wanted fewer integrations to maintain.

You can't please everyone. But you can make trade-offs transparent.

Document competing requirements. When stakeholders see their requests alongside others, they understand why prioritisation is necessary.

Find common ground early. Often, different teams want the same outcome but describe it differently. Dig deeper to find the shared goal.

Involve stakeholders in prioritisation. When people participate in decisions, they're more likely to support the outcome.

The Weekly Sync That Changed Everything

One practice that worked well: weekly enhancement reviews with client teams. We'd walk through the backlog together, discuss what was feasible within the sprint, and get agreement before committing.

This eliminated surprises. Clients felt heard. Engineering had clear priorities.

Lessons for Any PM

Enterprise or not, stakeholder alignment comes down to communication:

Be proactive about updates. Don't wait for people to ask. Share progress regularly.

Acknowledge constraints honestly. Saying "we can't do this now because..." builds more trust than vague promises.

Celebrate wins together. When a feature ships, make sure the people who championed it know. Alignment isn't a one-time activity. It's ongoing work that makes everything else easier.

The Data-Driven Approach to Product Prioritisation

Karthik skipped presentations and built real AI products.

Karthik Venkatraman was part of the September 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 13 other talented participants.