Quotes from James T. Brown

Hell hath no fury like a stakeholder scorned.

Another strategy for dealing with meddling stakeholders is to overwhelm them with tasks and communication. They insist on being involved, so involve them. If they have time to be this involved, give them work to do and assign actions to keep them busy with nonrisky or unimportant activities. Real work often makes people invisible and may make a meddling stakeholder invisible too.

Successful program management is about choosing a right pathway and owning the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen path, because in the real world the optimal or perfect path doesn't exist.