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The Stakeholder Alignment

What is stakeholder alignment?

And how Customer Victory keeps B2B projects on track

What is stakeholder alignment?

Stakeholder alignment means that the people who influence a project share the same definition of success, agree on the most important trade-offs, and know how decisions will be made. In my work, alignment is not the end goal. Alignment is the starting condition for Customer Victory: a shared, customer-centered outcome that makes UX strategy and design decisions easier, faster, and more consistent.

Why stakeholder alignment matters in complex B2B projects

In B2B digital projects, misalignment usually shows up as:
  • endless revisions and “one more round of feedback”
  • conflicting priorities between Marketing, Sales, IT, Product, and leadership
  • scope creep disguised as “small changes”
  • late-stage surprises because expectations were never made explicit
  • a website that looks polished but does not support real customer and business outcomes
When teams are aligned on Customer Victory first, UX strategy becomes executable and design stops being a debate.

Customer Victory: the simplest way to align stakeholders

Most alignment problems come from one root issue: teams are aligned on *internal priorities*, not on a shared picture of what success looks like for customers. Customer Victory is the shared goal that connects:
  • the customer’s current reality
  • the customer’s desired outcome
  • the business outcome you want to enable
It gives stakeholders a common language for trade-offs. Instead of “my department wants X”, the question becomes: Does this move the customer toward their victory?

What stakeholder alignment is (and what it is not)

Stakeholder alignment is:

  • a shared goal that guides decisions (Customer Victory)
  • agreed priorities and trade-offs
  • clear decision rights and a way to resolve conflicts
  • a common language across departments
  • a realistic definition of what “good” looks like

Stakeholder alignment is not:

– a long meeting where everyone gives opinions – a compromise that makes everybody slightly unhappy – a document that gets written and then ignored – a substitute for UX research or UX strategy

What “good alignment” looks like (concrete outputs)

A well-aligned team can usually point to:

  • a clear outcome statement: what success looks like for customers and the business
  • hypotheses and assumptions about the primary customer groups and their context
  • the 3–5 priorities that matter most for this project
  • the key trade-offs (for example: speed vs completeness, self-service vs sales-led)
  • decision rules (who decides what, and how)
  • an initial set of requirements, constraints, and open questions that UX strategy and design can build on

These outputs turn “alignment” into direction.

How stakeholder alignment becomes executable UX strategy

A practical way to structure the work: 1. Define Customer Victory What does success look like for customers? What must change for them? 2. Surface the real conflicts Where do priorities compete? What is currently blocking decisions? 3. Agree on trade-offs and decision rules What matters most when you cannot have everything? 4. Translate into UX strategy What does this mean for journeys, content, structure, and requirements? 5. Move into UX design Design becomes a focused execution of agreed direction, not a series of opinion loops.

If you want a fast signal on where your project might get stuck, take the 5-minute Stakeholder Alignment Audit.

Take the Audit

Takes you to: audit.marcelrothenbusch.de

You’ll get your score, your diagnostic report, and the complete toolkit, including the pitch template to get stakeholder buy-in, all before your next meeting starts.

FAQs

Who are “stakeholders” in a web or digital project?

Stakeholders are the people who influence what gets built and how success is defined. In B2B this often includes Marketing, Sales, IT, Product, Customer Success, leadership, and sometimes agency partners.

When should we do stakeholder alignment?

Ideally before UX strategy and design begins, or at the latest when a project is stuck and decisions keep circling.

Is stakeholder alignment the same as stakeholder management?

Not exactly. Stakeholder management is the ongoing practice of communication and expectations. Stakeholder alignment is the phase where you create shared direction so the project can move with fewer friction loops.

What if stakeholders disagree strongly?

That is normal. Alignment is not about removing disagreement. It is about making disagreement visible, then creating decision rules and priorities so the project can move forward.