How do you get stakeholders to actually follow a project plan?
Stakeholders ignore project plans and push back on timelines because they were built without their input. When people do not help create a plan, they do not respect it, and clients will later claim they were never informed of updates.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from September 2026.
- This comes up 218.7× more often in r/projectmanagement than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Co-drafting plans with the people who own the workDid this help you?
- 2Writing short, skimmable status updates instead of walls of textDid this help you?
- 3Keeping paper trails and receipts to counter shifting blameDid this help you?
- 4periodically checking in to ask if tasks have been reviewedDid this help you?
- 5documenting delays in project channels and submitting ticketsDid this help you?
- 6waiting for responses from senior task ownersDid this help you?
- 7Relying on consultants to define the scope and answer strategic questionsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I'm an Individual Contributor (IC) in a technical role. I was asked to lead a technical project earlier this year involving various teams that spans our entire infrastructure.”source ↗
“I'm junior compared to all the other people involved. The project includes my boss, ICs from other teams, and senior subject-matter experts.”source ↗
“One thing I'm unsure about is how to manage overdue or blocked tasks when the owners of next steps are more senior than I am. I don't want to overstep, but waiting for responses has not worked.”source ↗
“nobody respects a plan they didn't help build.”source ↗
“And when your client forgets they'll say you never told them.”source ↗
“To give you an example, I completed my part of a certain task, handed it off to someone else...and now it's been several weeks. The best I can do (I think) is periodically check in with them and ask if they have had a chance to review this task and complete their part before handing it back to me.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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