Capstone 1 - Initiating the Project
Google Project Management Certificate · Course 6: Applying Project Management in the Real World
Courses 1 to 5 taught the concepts: the four phases of the project life cycle, goals and scope, budgets and schedules, risk, quality, communication, and the Agile and Scrum methodologies. This capstone course teaches almost nothing new. Instead it drops all of it into one continuous scenario and asks whether the concepts can actually be applied when the information arrives the way it does in real life, scattered across a proposal, a stack of meeting transcripts, email threads and a page of team bios.
The scenario is Sauce and Spoon, a small restaurant group piloting tabletop ordering tablets at two of its five locations. The course follows Peta, the group’s newly hired first in-house project manager, through the whole life cycle. She has five years of project management experience and no restaurant experience at all, which is the point the instructor keeps returning to: strong project management skills usually transfer without subject matter expertise. Dan, the instructor, is a program manager at Google working on responsible practices for AI and machine learning, and he came to that role from teaching maths and coordinating sponsorship for a football club.
Week 1 covers the initiation phase end to end. The output is a finished project charter plus a stakeholder analysis, built up across five activities, and the skills practised alongside them are analysing documents for project details, negotiating scope, and influencing people who do not report to you.
The capstone premise
Section titled “The capstone premise”The difference from the taught courses is where the information comes from. There is no lecture that states the project goals. The goals have to be extracted from what people say, and some of them are never said out loud at all.
| Courses 1 to 5 | Course 6, the capstone | |
|---|---|---|
| How concepts arrive | Defined in a video, then illustrated | Assumed known; applied without re-teaching |
| Source of project detail | Given directly in the activity brief | Mined from a proposal, transcripts, emails and bios |
| Goals | Handed to you | Some explicit, some only implied by complaints in the source documents |
| Stakeholders | Named roles | Named people with histories, styles, blind spots and conflicting agendas |
| Output | One exercise per concept | One coherent portfolio of artifacts across the whole life cycle |
Peta is also explicitly presented as fallible. The course says it will have you evaluate her project management skills and learn what works and what does not, rather than treat her as a model to copy.
The Sauce and Spoon scenario
Section titled “The Sauce and Spoon scenario”Sauce and Spoon is a local restaurant chain built on scratch-to-table cuisine and partnerships with local farmers and suppliers. Its mission, as the proposal states it, is to enrich the community: fresh quick food for working families, customer needs first, an efficient and profitable business model that lets the group keep growing, and support for local businesses through sourcing.
What the project proposal says
Section titled “What the project proposal says”The proposal was written by Deanna Coleman, the Director of Operations, and it is the primary document Peta starts from. Its structure is executive summary, opportunity statement, project overview, proposed next steps and timeline, and the company OKRs.
The opportunity statement is unusually candid. In its first three years the group beat revenue goals without losing quality, but it burned its staff out, lost half its front-of-house people, made expensive human errors in ticketing and barely onboarded new employees. Today there are more locations and more sales, yet no more efficient procedures: orders take longer to arrive, negative reviews cite delay in service, and despite rising sales the margin has not moved.
The proposed remedy is a guest-facing digital menu and point-of-sale system, in the form of an integrated tablet at each table, giving guests a seamless ordering experience and the restaurant a more reliable ticketing system. The stated next steps are simply to scope the project, write a charter, and establish a pilot plan.
The pilot
Section titled “The pilot”| Decision | What was chosen | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Locations | Sauce and Spoon North and Downtown, two of five | Each has the right staff size and guest volume to test the concept |
| Section | The bar area only, at both sites | Bar guests want a faster experience; one section keeps training and problems contained |
| Features needed | Menu item add-on suggestions plus coupons | Supports the company-wide goal of increasing product mix |
| Timing | Launch at the start of Q2, ideally sooner | January and February are the quiet months |
| Measurement | Through the end of Q2, meaning end of June | Gives a full quarter of pilot data before any rollout decision |
Two pieces of restaurant vocabulary Peta has to ask about, both of which become project metrics. Table turn time is how long a party occupies a table, including the time to reset it for the next party: currently about 95 minutes in most sections and 80 minutes at the bar. Comping means not charging, and the current policy is to remake any meal a guest reports as wrong, which is where much of the food waste comes from. The other two terms that recur are FOH (front of house, servers and hosts) and BOH (back of house, kitchen staff, bussers and runners).
Who the stakeholders are
Section titled “Who the stakeholders are”The team bios are a supporting document in their own right, and they are written to expose motives, not just job titles.
| Person | Role | What the bio tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Omar Mubarak | Owner and CEO | Opened the first location five years ago, runs the group, extremely busy, not involved day to day. Accountable for direction, profitability and reputation |
| Deanna Coleman | Director of Operations | Came from hedge fund management, dives in and works directly with people, leads the vision, high expectations. Wrote the proposal and oversees the restaurant managers |
| Carter Ward | Executive Chef | Former military chef, owns the sustainable sourcing and scratch-to-table vision, final say on the menu, runs a tight kitchen |
| Gilly Tyson | General Manager, North | Career restaurant person who started as a waitress, loved by staff, a strong resource on training and operations. Her site is in the business district |
| Alex Schmidt | General Manager, Downtown | New to the role from retail management, adapted fast thanks to Gilly’s training. Their site is the busy downtown one |
| Nia Williams | General Manager, Waterfront | Worked up from hostess, passionate about the industry. Her location is not in the pilot |
| Zane Dutchman | Kitchen Manager, North | Recently promoted from sous chef, still learning, mostly from Larissa. Controls costs and labour at North |
| Larissa Stein | Kitchen Manager, Downtown | New to the company but ran a fast-paced Michelin-starred kitchen in New York. Watches operations closely |
| Seydou Diallo | Restaurant technology consultant | Tech support background, newly consulting, this is his first major project and he wants to prove himself to his boss |
| Peta Tsosie | Project Manager | Five years of experience, first in-house PM at the group, new to the restaurant industry |
Deanna also coaches Peta on the human terrain in an email: Carter is protective of his kitchen and does not back down when he believes its interests are at stake, so the practical route is to work with Zane and Larissa on kitchen details rather than escalating everything to Carter, gaining their input and buy-in along the way. She also offers to introduce Peta to Omar, on the grounds that his buy-in will matter across many future projects.
Reading the supporting materials
Section titled “Reading the supporting materials”The course calls this strategic thinking: analysing documentation and talking with stakeholders so decisions rest on the information actually available. Each material type yields something different.
The first project meeting alone produces the bar-area decision, the product mix goal, the 30-minute table turn target, the 10 percent daily guest count target, the food waste problem, the worry that staff will resist new technology, and the unknown of how the tablets integrate with the existing POS and host software. The host software tracks table usage and wait lists; the POS software holds prices, tracks orders and produces the check.
The 5 Ws and the initiation guiding questions
Section titled “The 5 Ws and the initiation guiding questions”The phase reading is a checklist compiled by Google project managers for exactly this situation: a new project, a new domain, and stakeholders who have not thought in project terms.
What are the actual steps. Why names the problem being solved and how the deliverables help. Who asks who really benefits: customers, stakeholders or employees. When is the deadline, if there is one, since not all projects have one. Where means locally, internationally or across many sites.
Two tips go with it: ask three stakeholders from three different areas to describe the project to you, then synthesise those conversations into a single project summary. If three people describe three different projects, that is the misalignment surfacing early.
Questions for each charter section
Section titled “Questions for each charter section”| Area | Guiding questions from the reading |
|---|---|
| Goals | What are the success metrics? What do team members expect from the project? What do stakeholders want from it? |
| Scope | Who is the project delivered to, and who is the end user? What is its size and complexity? What is the timeline, the budget, the resources required? |
| Costs | What are the biggest risks? What money, time, people and supplies will it take, and where do they come from? What is the cost of not solving the problem? |
| Benefits | What is the biggest problem being solved, and how does the project solve it? How do you define success or completion? What are the direct and indirect benefits to users and the organisation? |
| Stakeholders | What are your priorities and goals, and how does this project align with them? What role would you like to play? Who else should I reach out to? Here is how I plan to keep you informed, does that work? |
The scope tips are the ones that matter most later: put scope in writing at the start and get every stakeholder to sign off, refer back to what was agreed whenever someone suggests adding more, challenge anything that looks like scope creep by naming it as such and asking whether stakeholders agree, and if stakeholders disagree on scope, facilitate a conversation towards common ground rather than deciding for them.
The stakeholder tips add two practical moves: read the organisational chart of your company and of any supplier you work with, researching titles you do not recognise, and for a senior stakeholder, approach their administrative business partner or someone on their team first to learn what role that person may actually want before asking for an introduction.
The project charter
Section titled “The project charter”The reading describes four things it does. It organises vital project information in a skimmable format so busy senior stakeholders have visibility and a chance to give feedback. It ensures everyone agrees what success is. It is a living document, continually updated, serving as the central source of truth. And it is shared with stakeholders who must approve it before the project can advance to planning.
The six sections
Section titled “The six sections”| Section | What it holds |
|---|---|
| 1. Project summary | A high-level overview of the project and its aims. One to three sentences, brief and to the point |
| 2. Project goals | The desired results of the project, agreed between stakeholders and the project manager. They answer why we are doing this |
| 3. Deliverables | The specific tasks and tangible or intangible outcomes that let the team meet the goals |
| 4. Scope and exclusion | The boundaries, split into in-scope and out-of-scope. Details that do not contribute to the goals are out of scope |
| 5. Benefits and costs | The expected gains set against what must be spent to realise them |
| 6. Appendix | Additional content at the end of the document, used here to time stamp misalignments and their resolutions |
Charters vary a lot between projects and companies, but most contain some variation of these, and whatever the form, they lay out goals, highlight benefits and keep stakeholders aligned. A charter may also carry sections such as budget, cost and success metrics.
Activity: draft a project charter
Section titled “Activity: draft a project charter”The first activity is the blank template, the proposal and one meeting transcript. The template is a single document with the headings Project Charter: [Title], DATE, then Project Summary, Project Goals, Deliverables, Scope and Exclusion (split into In-Scope and Out-of-Scope), Benefits and Costs (split into Benefits and Costs), and Appendix.
The brief asks for a project name and date, a summary of one to three sentences, 4 to 8 goals and 5 to 9 deliverables, drawn only from the supporting materials. The instruction that makes it hard is that some goals are stated explicitly and others are only suggested or implied, so the materials have to be read for complaints as well as for requests. A generative AI tool is allowed for a first draft of the summary or for brainstorming goals, with the reminder to use your own judgement to finalise it.
| In my draft | Content |
|---|---|
| Name | Sauce and Spoon Tabletop Menu Tablet Pilot Rollout |
| Summary | A pilot of tabletop tablets in the bar section at North and Downtown, to speed up service, increase product mix and generate operational data supporting annual growth goals, measured through the end of Q2 |
| Explicit goals | Increase product mix by raising average check from $65 to $75; cut table turn time by 30 minutes; raise daily guest counts by 10 percent; cut food waste by 25 percent; increase appetizer sales |
| Implied goals | Reduce negative reviews about service delays; reduce front-of-house burnout and turnover |
| Deliverables | Tablets installed in both bar areas, a chosen vendor package with add-ons and coupons, integration with POS and host software, a staff training plan and materials, defined metric tracking, and a pilot evaluation report at the end of Q2 |
The charter as an alignment tool
Section titled “The charter as an alignment tool”Whenever you communicate project details, think about the audience and what matters to them. For a charter the audience is the stakeholders, so the questions to ask are: who are they, which details matter most to them, and which details might they disagree with. Then check the charter actually contains those details before presenting it.
Stakeholders are generally not involved in day-to-day execution, which is why initiation is the moment to write down what everyone expects. It is also the cheapest moment to change anything: once the project moves into planning and execution, a substantive change can mean undoing completed work. Early on, do not be afraid to adjust.
The instructor’s worked example of misalignment is two stakeholders on this same project, one imagining the tablets eventually automating ordering completely, the other wanting them to improve order accuracy. The response is to facilitate a discussion between the two and confirm which goal the project is actually pursuing.
Documenting misalignments
Section titled “Documenting misalignments”Record the feedback received, then document each misalignment and its resolution so the team can refer back to the decision later. The mechanism is an appendix with a time stamp, the date and sometimes the time when the entry was added.
Activity: revise your charter
Section titled “Activity: revise your charter”The second activity supplies two email threads and one short meeting transcript, and asks for 6 to 10 goals, 5 to 9 deliverables, and 1 to 2 misalignments in the appendix with the decision that followed each. The guiding questions for the appendix are a useful template in themselves: who are the stakeholders, when do they disagree, who is the decision-maker, how was the misalignment clarified, and what was the final decision.
The three source documents produce three distinct situations:
| Source | Disagreement | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Deanna’s email on extra goals | She wants a plan to reallocate FOH payroll to hire kitchen staff in the charter now. Peta objects that there is no data yet on tablet impact on revenue | Unresolved. Kept out of scope, revisited once pilot data exists. Interim idea: monitor BOH bandwidth and open two part-time line cook roles |
| The appetizer sales thread | Gilly says two thirds of her after-4pm parties already order appetizers so tablets will change little, and suggests dropping the goal. Alex, whose dinner crowd orders appetizers at about 20 percent of tables, proposes 20 percent growth | Resolved by splitting the target per location: 10 percent at North, 20 percent at Downtown, 15 percent average |
| The guest wait time meeting | Peta argues the goal duplicates the table turn time goal. Gilly notes wait time also depends on how busy the restaurant is | Resolved. Dropped as a separate goal, with Peta undertaking to explain to Deanna how shorter turn times reduce wait times |
The same meeting is where the measurement window gets fixed: piloting in April means measuring through the end of June.
SMART goals
Section titled “SMART goals”Some goals are broad during initiation because not all details are known, and that is acceptable, but specificity should be added wherever possible, because clear goals prevent misalignment and sharpen the understanding of scope, budget and timeline. The recurring real-world problem is a stakeholder who says they want more customers or more units sold without saying how many, of what kind, or by when.
Benchmarking the restaurant industry surfaces three metrics the course names: table turnover rate, the average time a guest spends at the table; prime cost, labour cost plus the total cost of goods such as food and drink; and average check amount, the average spend per guest on a meal. Most industries have their own equivalents, technology included.
The relevance test is worked through on this project: because one of Sauce and Spoon’s broader objectives is fresh, quick food for working families, a goal such as cutting customer checkout time by 10 percent on average in the first six weeks after implementation is relevant, since it serves the larger company aim.
Activity: update your charter goals
Section titled “Activity: update your charter goals”The third activity asks for the goals to be analysed against all five SMART criteria, with the deficient parts highlighted, then 3 to 5 goals rewritten in full. Its own worked example is a goal that starts as increase gift card sales by the end of the year and becomes increase gift card sales by 15 percent by the end of the year by offering a 25 percent discount to returning customers, so the rewrite adds both the measure and the method.
A useful concession in the brief: where a detail genuinely is not known yet, write TBD into the goal rather than dropping the criterion, because a goal written in SMART language forces the team to come back and fill the gap.
My five rewritten goals, all time-bound to the end of Q2:
- Raise the average check total from $65 to $75 using tablet upsell prompts and coupons on appetizers and specialty beverages, supporting the company-wide product mix goal.
- Increase appetizer sales by 15 percent on average across the pilot, 10 percent at North and 20 percent at Downtown, via add-on suggestions and coupons.
- Cut average bar table turn time by 30 minutes, from roughly 80 minutes to roughly 50, by letting guests order and pay at the tablet.
- Raise average daily guest counts at the two pilot sites by 10 percent, driven by the faster turnover.
- Cut food waste by 25 percent by capturing guest order modifications directly on the tablet and reducing comped or re-fired meals.
The non-numeric goals stay in the charter as supporting goals rather than being deleted: fewer negative reviews about service delays, less front-of-house burnout and turnover, and clean baseline versus pilot data to inform the rollout decision.
Scope, benefits and costs
Section titled “Scope, benefits and costs”Scope, benefits and cost are the second alignment conversation, after vision and goals. The reasoning is that stakeholders reading the charter may never see the detailed plans that come later, so consensus on the critical elements has to be reached now, while the details are still soft. If a particular benefit matters to a key stakeholder, emphasise that benefit in the charter.
In-scope and out-of-scope
Section titled “In-scope and out-of-scope”Scope is the boundaries of the project, for instance the number of restaurants in the pilot. Anything that does not contribute to the project goals is out of scope. The three questions are: which details are stakeholders already aligned on and therefore in scope, which elements do they disagree about, and which details should be designated out of scope for this particular project.
- Tablet rollout in the bar section only, at North and Downtown
- Vendor selection and configuration of add-on and coupon features
- Integration with the existing POS and host software
- Staff training on the new system
- Metric tracking through the end of Q2
- Updated website and menu design tied to the tablet experience
- IT maintenance through the end of the year
- A kitchen performance metric, once Carter defines one
- Rollout to Waterfront and the other two locations
- Rollout to the main dining room and patio at the pilot sites
- Changing the meal-comp and order-return policy, handled separately by Operations
- Reallocating FOH payroll to hire BOH staff, pending pilot data
- A separate decrease guest wait time goal, covered by table turn time
- Broader employee satisfaction programmes beyond the agreed kitchen metric
Out-of-scope lines are not rejections. Three of the six above are live topics that were deliberately moved elsewhere or deferred, and the appendix records why.
Benefits and costs
Section titled “Benefits and costs”Benefits are usually already written down in the business case or project proposal, so that is where to look first. Two further points: a list of benefits often reveals project goals that were missed, and a list of costs lets stakeholders weigh the gains against the money needed to realise them. Build the cost list by working with stakeholders to get estimates on labour, materials and anything else the project will make the business pay for. The benefits should outweigh the costs, which is nearly always true at the moment a project is proposed; putting both in one place is what makes that judgement visible.
The final charter splits both ways. Direct benefits are the five numeric goals. Indirect benefits are fewer service-delay complaints, better customer satisfaction, reduced front-of-house burnout, clean operational data for the rollout decision, better integration between tablets, POS and host software, and a refreshed digital menu presence. The costs came from the chosen vendor, Terrific Tablets:
| Cost line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Training materials and fees | $10,000 |
| Hardware and software implementation across locations | $30,000 |
| Maintenance, IT fees through end of year | $5,000 |
| Updated website and menu design fee | $5,000 |
| Other customisation fees | $550 |
| Total | $50,550 |
Indirect costs sit underneath as prose rather than numbers: staff training time and the short-term productivity dip during rollout, project manager and stakeholder time through the end of Q2, and possible interim kitchen staffing.
A practitioner’s view of initiation
Section titled “A practitioner’s view of initiation”A Google interviewee describes the recurring initiation problem as getting alignment between key stakeholders, plus attracting good project managers onto the project rather than assigning them, on the principle that attraction beats promotion. To refine success criteria he works through roughly twenty questions: understanding the environment, the pitfalls and risks in the ecosystem, survey interviews asking people what they see as the problem, and quantitative questions to establish what is actually measurable.
His three causes of project failure are worth memorising: poor project definition, disorganisation because the project lead never established a framework to manage the work, and too many people, where everyone wants to work on the project and nobody is accountable. Where two sponsors are apples and oranges, the fix is many meetings and brokered compromise.
Activity: complete your charter
Section titled “Activity: complete your charter”The fourth and largest activity fills in scope, benefits and costs using new materials, including the vendor quote, Omar’s request to expand the rollout, and a brainstorm meeting. The final charter also carries a fuller appendix, six time-stamped entries, of which three were resolved and three were not:
| Misalignment | Parties | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Expand the rollout to all dining areas | Omar wants it, Deanna supports him, Peta pushes back on budget, timeline, training and satisfaction risk | Open. Peta to run a feasibility comparison and bring options back before scope changes |
| Meal-comp and order-return policy change | Carter and Alex want it tied to the rollout so the food waste goal is reachable; Gilly and Peta call it a company policy matter | Resolved. Out of scope; Deanna and Carter handle it separately, Peta reflects downstream effects in the goals |
| FOH payroll reallocation to hire BOH staff | Alex and Deanna want the plan in the charter now; Peta and Gilly resist without data | Open. Out of scope for now, revisit with pilot data; interim option of two part-time line cook roles |
| Kitchen staff satisfaction as a goal | Carter wants it, Peta will not commit without a way to measure it | Resolved conditionally. Included if Carter defines a specific, measurable kitchen metric |
| Guest wait time as a separate goal | Peta and Alex call it redundant; Gilly agrees to drop it if Deanna is aligned | Resolved. Removed, covered by table turn time |
| Appetizer target per location | Alex proposed 20 percent, Gilly argued for dropping the goal at North | Resolved. 10 percent North, 20 percent Downtown, 15 percent average |
How the charter evolved
Section titled “How the charter evolved”Stakeholder analysis and the power-interest grid
Section titled “Stakeholder analysis and the power-interest grid”The reason the analysis comes before the negotiations is practical: almost every part of a project needs input and agreement from several stakeholders, and they will not all value the same input or agree on the same things, so a project manager has to be a capable negotiator. The aspects commonly negotiated are scope, costs and benefits, timeline, success criteria, roles and responsibilities, and resources. Good early alignment prevents some of those negotiations from ever happening.
The four quadrants
Section titled “The four quadrants”- High priority, but not in every detail
- Keep them content and unsurprised
- Omar, the owner, who is rarely involved but whose sign-off gates the charter
- The highest effort group
- Keep them informed and treat their goals as top priority
- Deanna, plus the two pilot general managers and the project manager
- Affected by the outcome without the power to steer it
- Consult them; they often hold the operational detail
- Seydou the consultant, Zane and Larissa the kitchen managers
- Minimum effort
- Personal preferences can be deprioritised
- Nia, the Waterfront general manager, whose site is not in the pilot
Activity: complete a stakeholder analysis
Section titled “Activity: complete a stakeholder analysis”The template is a two-slide deck. Slide one is a table with the columns Stakeholder, Role, Power (H/M/L), Interest (H/M/L) and Notes. Slide two is the empty power-interest grid, power on the vertical axis and interest on the horizontal, with the four quadrants pre-labelled and a loose box per stakeholder to be dragged into place. The instruction is literally to drag each stakeholder’s box to the appropriate spot.
| Stakeholder | Power | Interest | Placement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Omar Mubarak, Owner and CEO, project sponsor | High | Low | Keep satisfied |
| Deanna Coleman, Director of Operations | High | High | Manage closely |
| Carter Ward, Executive Chef | High | Medium | Keep satisfied, bordering manage closely |
| Gilly Tyson, GM North | Medium | High | Manage closely |
| Alex Schmidt, GM Downtown | Medium | High | Manage closely |
| Peta Tsosie, Project Manager | Medium | High | Manage closely |
| Zane Dutchman, Kitchen Manager North | Low | Medium | Show consideration |
| Larissa Stein, Kitchen Manager Downtown | Low | Medium | Show consideration |
| Seydou Diallo, technology consultant | Low | High | Show consideration |
| Nia Williams, GM Waterfront | Low | Low | Monitor |
The interesting placements are the borderline ones. Carter has high power over kitchen decisions but only medium interest in the tablets themselves, which is why he lands next to Omar rather than beside Deanna. The two general managers and Peta are only medium power, yet direct involvement in the pilot puts them in the manage closely group in practice.
Stakeholder management tips
Section titled “Stakeholder management tips”The accompanying reading defines stakeholder management as maintaining good relationships with the people who have the most influence on your work, and notes that without it a project is less likely to succeed.
- Identify everyone at the start. Early involvement sets clear expectations, responsibilities and boundaries, gives people time to voice concerns, and creates a sense of ownership that makes them more likely to contribute and remove barriers.
- Keep the project vision clear. The vision describes the need the project fulfils. Because stakeholders apply pressure to add requirements, shorten timelines or cut resources, agreement on the vision, and specifically on what done looks like, protects everyone. Include highly influential stakeholders in strategic planning.
- Equip stakeholders with user-friendly resources. A one-pager giving an overview, or a weekly status report with the latest information and links to the main artifacts, plus access to the documentation itself.
- Learn what they care about and why, by asking about their most important priorities and goals, the role they want, and how the project supports them.
- Adjust communication frequency and approach to each role and preference, and say so explicitly rather than assuming.
- Enlist senior stakeholders when needed, and ask who else you should be talking to.
- Bring problems to stakeholders once they have a vested interest: how would you handle this, what solutions come to mind?
Negotiating scope with stakeholders
Section titled “Negotiating scope with stakeholders”Persuasion and negotiation are framed as constructive tools that improve communication, clarify wants and needs and produce workable solutions, and being good at them raises your influence. The key posture is to treat the other party as colleagues and peers rather than opponents, which is another reason for doing the stakeholder analysis first: it makes them people with their own jobs and pressures who also want the project to succeed.
The instructor’s example is a disagreement over headcount: you want five people, a stakeholder wants three. Mutual benefit might be installing automated software to absorb some of the work, or adjusting the timeline and expectations so five people are not needed. The stakeholder keeps the smaller team, the work still gets done. Brainstorm every option that meets the criteria first, so that in the negotiation you can present several alternatives rather than one.
Trade-offs matter as much as satisfying stakeholders, and making them requires knowing the project’s priorities across scope, timeline and budget. If a deadline is fixed, negotiate any scope change that threatens it; if the requirements are fixed, negotiate budget or timeline instead. The triple constraint model, the iron triangle from an earlier course, is the tool for deciding whether a request is acceptable and what it will cost elsewhere.
The tips reading
Section titled “The tips reading”-
Understand motivations before the meeting. They may be budgetary, interpersonal such as wanting more time, or tied to personal career goals.
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Set the scene. Open by reflecting on why you are meeting, remind everyone why the project exists, and affirm the shared goal.
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Listen first. Hear them out before presenting your own view; acknowledging their perspective makes your suggestions easier to accept later.
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Ask questions to define goals. Push for specific, measurable detail rather than subjective language, for example cutting newsletter signup time by at least 30 percent.
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Explain the why before the what. Give the reasons and the value first; people who understand where you are coming from are likelier to grant the request.
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Do not oversell. State your case, then withdraw slightly and let people process. Silence here is respect, and a long pause means you have prompted thought.
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Be creative. Looking for alternative solutions converts a heavy negotiation into a team effort, and there is often more than one answer.
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Do not make it personal. Focus on what is good for the project, and reframe with objective facts if personal considerations creep in.
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Seek a win-win. Work out what would satisfy the other side, then find a version that also satisfies you. One party may compromise more, but a mutually beneficial agreement is always the target.
Reaching a win-win
Section titled “Reaching a win-win”The follow-up reading adds three practices, applicable to vendors, contractors and suppliers as much as to internal stakeholders. Share information rather than withholding it: open lines where each party names its worries and preferences work better, for instance saying up front that a previous supplier delivered poor quality so expectations on quality are clear. Ask questions and listen actively, so both sides have the information a good agreement needs. Propose multiple options, because a single offer invites the other party to treat it as take it or leave it; if every proposal is rejected, ask which one they liked best, since that points towards a workable solution.
A scope change in the wild
Section titled “A scope change in the wild”A program manager at YouTube tells the cautionary version. A scope change can arrive at any time and usually arrives just before launch. On an app measuring body weight percentages, the CEO, focused on the launch PR, demanded a change to the graphs at the last minute. The team asked the developers for an estimate, which pushed well past the launch date, so they produced several proposals and negotiated the outcome: launch as built, then ship the change about two weeks later in a second release.
Two lessons he draws. Stack rank a last-minute request against everything else at its priority level. And nothing is free: when scope comes in, go back and identify what gets pushed out to make room.
Influencing without authority
Section titled “Influencing without authority”The final piece of the week is the negotiation Peta is actually facing. Omar, having reviewed the charter, emails to say it matches his vision but he wants the rollout expanded to every dining area rather than just the bar, and he will sign off once the charter is revised. Peta replies that she will explore it but cannot promise the current budget or schedule will support an expansion that size, and that she is concerned about maintaining customer satisfaction if the project scales too fast. Deanna then presses her privately: Omar rarely gets involved, so when he does it matters.
Peta’s response is to gather evidence rather than to argue or to capitulate. She convenes the general managers, the kitchen managers, the consultant and the executive chef and runs a brainstorm, stating openly that she has reasons to push back but wants input, and that if the change is not feasible she wants a thoughtful rationale for refusing.
| Voice | Position |
|---|---|
| Larissa, Kitchen Manager Downtown | Initially in favour given the revenue goals, then persuaded that starting small and expanding once the effort and data are understood makes more sense |
| Gilly, GM North | Confident her restaurant could handle it and could guide Zane through it |
| Zane, Kitchen Manager North | Open to expansion with Gilly’s guidance, if it makes sense once everything else is considered |
| Alex, GM Downtown | Hesitant. Worked hard to restore staff morale and service quality, and a small problem in a big rollout could be hard to recover from |
| Seydou, consultant | Advises against, despite standing to sell more tablets. A bar rollout is lower risk, and letting the kitchen scale up gradually matters because guests with tablets order more |
| Carter, Executive Chef | Against. He already has concerns about kitchen staffing with the bar rollout alone, and thinks the rollout has to be incremental |
Peta’s summary back to the room is the negotiation position in one paragraph: an expanded rollout would give more accurate metrics and much larger profits if it succeeded, but would require pushing back the timeline, buying more tablets and wiring, and hiring more back-of-house staff, and the benefits may not outweigh the risks. Staying with the bar keeps customer satisfaction high and the project inside its original scope, lets the kitchen scale gradually, and lets any problems be handled discreetly. Carter’s closing warning is the reason the next step is about influence rather than argument: Omar and Deanna have both been pushing hard on growth and a digital presence, and he has already tried making his case without success.
Conger’s four steps and the coalition
Section titled “Conger’s four steps and the coalition”A coalition applies all four steps at once. It raises credibility by showing that others support the goal, its members help find common ground and supply evidence, and it allows an emotional connection by including someone with a good relationship with the stakeholder or a deep enough understanding of both the person and the goal to make that connection.
An effective coalition balances power and interest: people whose vested interest and subject expertise advance the goal, plus people with enough organisational power to get things done. This is exactly what the power-interest grid was built for, which is why the stakeholder analysis is the tool the course recommends for choosing coalition members.
The ask itself, by email, in person or by phone, has four parts:
- State clearly the issue you are trying to resolve.
- Explain which aspect of the project is being negotiated.
- Ask whether they would consider supporting your position, and say what that position is.
- Refer to the specific source of power or interest you identified for them.
The model sentence given is about timing: the launch timing will affect business hours, and your experience managing restaurant projects year-round would help explain why that factor needs reconsidering. It tells the person that you value them, why the issue affects them, and why you think they specifically can help.
Revision summary
Section titled “Revision summary”Next: Planning the work → - turning the charter into tasks, milestones and defensible time estimates.