Project Escalation: Prevention is Better than a Cure

Executive Summary/Purpose of the Document

In what might be construed as a sensitive issue for program and project managers or, in other words, their worst nightmare, escalation of a project’s issues beyond the project team, either to the customer’s higher management or to the implementation partner/system integrator’s (SI’s) higher management teams, is the least desired. In today’s growing enterprise landscapes, the implementation of new or the upgrade of existing business solutions has assumed unforeseen complexity, which requires better strategic planning and even greater flawless operational execution of that strategy than ever before.

With the previous statement defining the ideal or best-case scenario, experience has shown numerous instances in which even the best made plans do not meet their objectives and need revisions during execution, with the worst case being a complete re-planning to mitigate the risks.

What should ideally be covered in a dedicated book or series of articles, here is an attempt to convert some of the implicit understanding of the reasons, mitigation strategies, and impact of project escalations to explicit knowledge that can serve as a quick refresher for seasoned professionals and a reference for emerging professionals who can use the information in this document to avoid pitfalls.

The …