* The first step in stakeholder consensus may seem obvious, but it’s important to identify all of the stakeholders as well as their interests in the project. Alignments start with the frameworks for your consensus-building: timetables, goals, work plans, and ground rules. This is a hack because you agree already on some of the ‘easy’ stuff. * When you haven’t worked with a stakeholder in the past, you can build credibility and reputation by working together on joint fact-finding around technical and factual questions. * Practicality matters to engineers and technical teams. It’s necessary to demonstrate that your plans are realistic. * As a PM, it’s important to own and guide the process of deliberation among the stakeholders to ensure that the outcomes are both feasible and politically palatable. Although perfect consensus is obviously ideal, promoting near-consensus alternatives to get buy-in is a key responsibility of PMs and TPMs.