Jim asks: “I’m going to do some training of my Business Analyst team, how can I simulate the stakeholder role in my training when I can’t get real ones?”
Answer: Thanks for the question Jim. I think there are two approaches that would work well here. The first thing is to have your students do role playing exercises where they take turns being a Business Analyst and being a stakeholder. We have an exercise where we simulate an angry customer and many of our students have gotten really into playing the angry customer part, in fact learning something from putting themselves in their customer’s shoes. Another idea is to look at your local community or university for acting students and have them come in to play a stakeholder. You’ll have to give them a good definition of the role and possibly some scripts to work from, but they are great candidates because they are looking for opportunities to practice acting.
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