You are standing in front of a room. You are not alone. There are more people in the room. Some you know, some you don't. They all stare at you. You have an idea what they are thinking. Or at least you think you do as you prepared this workshop as described. These people come here to defend their ground, to conquer new ones, to enhance power, to reduce influences from others, or just basically to kill time.

Thinking back about the Flow of stakes, you remember what you are supposed to do. You have to fulfil everyone's wishes today. The people in the room have their issues, their stakes, and they will project it on the topic of the day.

If you are trying to defend your department's independence, you will not be happy with an information system that integrates all processes and makes your employees, or at least the things they do, obsolete. You want to have separate systems for all processes, and your empire in between. You will probably use a different argument. Terms like 'easier to maintain', 'better to control', and 'more transparent' will more likely be used.

Formulate requirements

So there you are, sweating in front of the room. You have to formulate, together with the members of the workshop, the requirements for the end result of the project. It's a software project; a system will be a large part of this end result. This set of requirements should address all the stakes of the stakeholders, and, in the same time, not be conflicting to each other. If one requirement says the button should be blue, and another it should be green, you will have requirements that you know will be impossible to fulfill.

This sounds difficult. It actually is. But, with enough time and patience, you can get a long way. But time is normally not on your side, and you should actually try to get a reasonable set at the end of the workshop. Compromises, concessions and a little force enter the mix of actions of the project manager. Everybody should be a winner, and today!

Can you satisfy all the needs of every one? Can you take care of all their stakes? Can you make every one happy on this day? Probably not everyone. If people don't want to be concerned with the project in the first place, they can frustrate the process of conducting the workshop. If they are out to sabotage and are not into the win-win mood, you will not get them. Today. You can handle them later on. You cannot tolerate them having an impact on the flow of the workshop. They should not have been invited anyway. Sometimes, sadly, you have to. But you can block it by having some colleague sitting in that also feels differently about the subject. Or a senior manager, who shuts him or her up.