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Gather stakeholder feedback
When building a business case for a new AI technology or solution, gathering accurate feedback from internal stakeholders is crucial. This template helps you plan and structure stakeholder interviews to collect valuable insights about business problems that AI might solve.

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Why Use This Template

Stakeholder interviews serve several critical purposes in your AI procurement journey:
  • Validate the problem: Confirm that the issue is significant enough to warrant investment
  • Quantify the impact: Gather metrics that demonstrate the business cost of the current situation
  • Build consensus: Engage stakeholders early to reduce resistance later
  • Collect diverse perspectives: Understand how the problem affects different teams
  • Identify hidden requirements: Discover needs that might not be obvious initially
Using a structured approach ensures you collect comprehensive feedback while respecting stakeholders’ time.

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Template Structure

The Stakeholder Feedback template includes:

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1. Stakeholder Impact Map

This section helps you identify which stakeholders to interview based on how they’re affected by the problem: 
## STAKEHOLDER IMPACT MAP

### Role Category: [Executive/Direct User/Technical/Process Owner/Support]

### Key Areas of Impact:
- Strategic goals affected
- Budget implications
- Daily workflow disruptions
- Etc.

### Suggested Stakeholders to Interview:
- [Role-specific suggestions]

### Impact Areas to Explore:
- [Role-specific questions]

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2. Meeting Agenda Template

A structured interview format to ensure you cover all important aspects of the problem: 
## Meeting Title: [Problem Area] Stakeholder Interview 

### Summary: Gather insights and feedback on [business problem] to inform potential solutions and next steps
### Duration: [30/60] minutes

## Agenda:

### Welcome and Context (5 mins)
- Purpose of the interview
- Focus on problem understanding
- Confidentiality and open feedback

### Current Situation (10-15 mins)
- Current workflows/processes
- Key challenges and pain points
- Impact on daily work

### Impact Assessment (10-15 mins)
- Business impact
- Team/individual impact
- Customer/stakeholder impact

### Future State Discussion (5-10 mins)
- Desired outcomes
- Success metrics
- Potential approaches

### Wrap-up (5 mins)
- Additional insights
- Who else should be consulted
- Next steps
- Follow-up preferences

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3. Meeting Talk Track

Detailed speaking points for each section of the agenda to help guide the conversation effectively: 
### Welcome and Context Setting (5 mins)

1. **Introduce Yourself and Explain the Interview Purpose**
   - "Hello, [Stakeholder Name]. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. I'm [Your Name], and I'm working with our team to gather feedback on [problem area] to understand the challenges and explore opportunities for improvement."

2. **Context Around the Problem**
   - "As you may know, we've been experiencing [brief problem description]. Our leadership is considering addressing this through potential AI solutions, and we want to ensure we thoroughly understand the problem before evaluating options."

3. **Set the Agenda Purpose**
   - "The purpose of today's conversation is to collect insights directly from those who are affected by this issue. Your feedback is crucial in defining the right approach."

4. **Emphasize Openness and Confidentiality**
   - "I want to assure you that your input will remain confidential and will be aggregated with other feedback. Honest feedback is essential to the success of this project."

5. **Clarify Scope: Problem Understanding**
   - "We're not jumping ahead to solutions at this stage. Our focus today is purely on fully understanding the problem."

6. **Invite Engagement**
   - "Please feel free to share your thoughts openly. Your perspective on how this issue impacts your work is invaluable."

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How to Use This Template

  1. Identify stakeholder categories relevant to your AI initiative
  2. Create a stakeholder impact map to determine who to interview
  3. Schedule individual or group interviews with key stakeholders
  4. Customize the agenda and talk track for each stakeholder type
  5. Conduct the interviews, taking detailed notes
  6. Synthesize findings to identify patterns and quantify the problem
When interviewing stakeholders, focus on understanding their current challenges without immediately suggesting AI solutions. This approach prevents biasing their feedback and ensures you capture the true nature of the problem.

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Example: Vector Database Stakeholder Interview

Here’s how the template was applied for a company evaluating a Vector Database platform: 
## Meeting title: Vector Database Stakeholder Interview
Summary: To gather insights on the challenges faced by the AI engineering team regarding vector search performance, scalability, and integration with our existing AI applications.

## Welcome and Context Setting (5 mins)

Briefly introduce the purpose of the interview: to understand the challenges the team is facing with our current approach to storing and retrieving vector embeddings for AI applications, and identify opportunities for improvement through a dedicated vector database platform.

Provide context: This interview is about evaluating vector database platforms to enhance our AI application performance and capabilities. The main issues are query latency, scaling limitations with our current solution, and the engineering resources required for maintenance. Specifically, we're looking at the challenges our team faces in efficiently storing, querying, and managing the growing volume of vector embeddings for our RAG applications, multi-modal search, and recommendation systems. This project is sponsored by Maya Rodriguez, our Chief Technology Officer.

## Understanding the Current Situation (10 mins)

Ask them to describe their current workflows and processes related to vector embedding storage and retrieval.

Gather quantitative information:
"How much time does your team spend each week on maintaining the current vector storage solution?"
"What metrics are being affected by this issue, and how?" (e.g., average query latency is currently 800ms, our maximum index size is limited to 10 million vectors)
"What is your current cost per query, and how is that scaling with usage growth?"
Ask if they are using any specific workarounds to deal with performance or scaling issues.

## Impact on Work and Team (10 mins)

Qualitative focus:
"How do the current vector search limitations affect your day-to-day development work?"
"What specific challenges have you faced with integrating new AI models or use cases due to these limitations?"
"Who else is affected by these performance issues, and how?" (e.g., end users, product teams, data scientists)
"How do these limitations impact your ability to innovate or meet product roadmap objectives?"

## Potential Solutions and Outcomes (10 mins)

"In your opinion, what capabilities would an ideal vector database solution provide?"
"What performance benchmarks would you expect from a new solution?" (e.g., query speed, vector capacity, similarity algorithm options)
"How would improved vector search capabilities enable new AI features or products?"
"What integration requirements would you have for a new vector database platform?"

## Closing Thoughts and Next Steps (5 mins)

"Which other team members would you recommend I speak with to gather more technical or business insights?"
"Are there any aspects of vector database requirements we haven't covered?"
Thank them for their time and explain what happens next with the gathered insights.
Offer them a chance to be involved in the evaluation process if they're interested.

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Key Stakeholder Categories for AI Projects

When planning your stakeholder interviews for an AI initiative, consider including representatives from these groups:

Executive Sponsors

Budget holders and strategic decision makers who care about ROI, strategic alignment, and risk management

Direct Users

Day-to-day users affected by the problem who can provide insights on workflow disruptions and practical challenges

Technical Stakeholders

IT, security, and implementation teams who can identify integration requirements and technical constraints

Process Owners

Managers and team leads responsible for affected processes who can speak to broader operational impacts

Support Functions

Legal, procurement, and finance teams who can highlight compliance, budgeting, and vendor management considerations

External Stakeholders

Customers or partners affected by the problem who can provide an outside perspective on its impact

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Best Practices for Effective Stakeholder Interviews

  1. Prepare thoroughly: Customize your questions for each stakeholder’s role and perspective
  2. Listen more than you talk: Aim for the stakeholder to speak 80% of the time
  3. Ask open-ended questions: “How” and “why” questions yield richer insights than yes/no questions
  4. Capture metrics: Collect specific numbers that quantify the problem’s impact
  5. Follow the unexpected: Be willing to explore new angles that emerge during the conversation
  6. Summarize and verify: At the end, recap key points to ensure you’ve understood correctly
  7. Show appreciation: Thank stakeholders for their time and insights

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Next Steps After Stakeholder Interviews

Once you’ve completed your stakeholder interviews, you can:
  1. Create a problem statement that synthesizes the feedback
  2. Build a business case for addressing the identified problem
By following this structured approach to gathering stakeholder feedback, you’ll lay a solid foundation for your AI procurement process and increase the likelihood of selecting a solution that truly addresses your organization’s needs.

Business Case Template

Ready to kick off your buying project? Use our Business Case template to build alignment around your idea.