Align before design: Why stakeholder misalignment derails digital projects

"Make the website more dynamic." "Make this page pop." "Can we add an AI chatbot?" "Let's make the site more AI optimized."

Now that AI makes it faster and cheaper to build, the requests come even faster, the road map gets messier and the projects are often failing to move the needle.

You're playing digital Jenga, with everyone pulling in different directions. Before you know it, you've got 10 CTAs in the nav, a 20-image slideshow, confused students, frustrated staff and some weird-looking version of Clippy jumping around your site every 30 seconds gaslighting your students with incorrect answers to questions. A Frankenstein website that somehow still needs to be "dynamic." And you're still trying to figure out what someone meant by "dynamic" and how you're going to measure success.

We're pretty good at our jobs. So why does this keep happening?

There's something bigger behind these problems. It starts before the research, strategy, design, and technology and keeps tearing through our work.

Tamara Adlin, co-author of "The Persona Lifecycle" and an executive alignment strategist, will explain where these project tornadoes come from and introduce Align Before Design — the framework she developed to help startups and established tech companies get aligned.

Adam Staffa, with 15+ years in higher ed web, will show how he adapted Tamara's workshop for a community college homepage redesign. He got the entire executive team, deans, advisors and even the faculty senate leads aligned — and delivered the redesign in under three months, under budget and to praise across campus.

Whether you're in senior leadership or a web coordinator, you can help get your team aligned. You'll leave with five questions every project should answer, ways to get those answers and a quick alignment canvas you can use when the next request to "make it more dynamic" comes your way.