Stakeholder Interview
Overview
Use this skill to extract authoritative decisions from internal stakeholders and convert them into traceable engineering constraints.
Scope Boundaries
- Requirements or architecture choices are blocked by missing policy or ownership decisions.
- Teams disagree about constraints and need documented decision authority.
- Cross-functional alignment is required before implementation commitments.
Templates And Assets
- Interview note template:
assets/stakeholder-interview-template.md
- Decision conflict log:
assets/decision-conflict-log-template.md
Inputs To Gather
- Decision questions and why each question is blocking progress.
- Stakeholder map with authority boundaries and fallback approvers.
- Existing assumptions, unresolved conflicts, and time constraints.
Deliverables
- Interview records with source, date, authority level, and explicit decision statement.
- Constraint catalog (policy, compliance, operational, budget, timeline).
- Conflict log with owner, escalation route, and required resolution date.
Workflow
- Define interview goals as decision questions, not open brainstorming topics.
- Prioritize stakeholders by decision authority and delivery criticality.
- Conduct structured interviews and separate facts from preferences.
- Confirm decisions in writing with explicit scope and expiry assumptions.
- Record conflicts and escalate unresolved items with options and impacts.
- Publish an auditable summary that downstream requirement skills can consume.
Quality Standard
- Every key claim has a named source and explicit authority level.
- Ambiguous statements are converted into verifiable constraints.
- Conflicts are visible with an assigned owner and deadline.
- Outputs are specific enough to drive requirement and implementation decisions.
Failure Conditions
- Stop when no stakeholder with decision authority is available.
- Stop when interview outputs mix assumptions and approved policy.
- Escalate when blocking conflicts remain unresolved past agreed deadlines.