Karthik RamamurthyAuthor, Say YES to Project Success| Founder KeyResultzChennai, Tamilnadu, Tamilnadu, India
You are managing a complex, multi-dimensional project that is over budget, has not met most of the delivery dates, and has several technical issues.
Your boss tells you that the customer will likely cancel the project if she hears any more bad news. He stresses that you should focus only on the positive and not bring bad news unless the problem has been solved.
You know that there are many technical problem areas, that as of yet, do not have solutions. To make matters worse, you also know that there exist several open risks on the project.
You have developed a good working relationship with the customer and have a weekly meeting to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly.
How would you respond to your boss? How would you change your weekly communication with the customer? Saving Changes...
George FreemanThought Leader | Author | Architect| Florida, United States
Hi Karthik,
If you are the PM in a traditional sense and under charter, then the accountability of the project starts-with and ends-with you. In your setup, the boss only shared his thoughts and did not make a directive, however, if a directive was made then you would need to make a legal, ethical and reasonableness test against it. If that test failed, then it’s incumbent on the PM to push back through their management chain, else wear the responsibility of an inappropriate action.
However, it sounds like the customer is simply flexing their accountability grip and stating their position on the budgeting and scheduling issues – as they should. The manager in kind is then flexing his accountability grip on the PM – as he should. So, from my point of view, this is normal political discourse when missing budgetary or scheduling marks.
The good news in that the customer is already aware of the reasons for the overruns, as you have already shared the “good, the bad, and the ugly” with them due to your “good working relationship.” So, at this point, you just need to accept the facts as they are, take responsibility, revise your course and bring the project in for a landing. Saving Changes...
Amany NuseibehSpeaker, Global Leader | Optimal ConsultingSydney, Nsw, Australia
Hi Karthik,
Thank you for sharing this ethical dilemma. The discussion thread has offered lots of wise advice from experienced PMs.
This is becoming more of a common situation that PMs managing outsourced pieces of work face.
From my experience, as long as you have build a good foundation of transparency, trust and open communication, your customer will be inclined to help and keep things moving - even if your boss doesn't think so. The exception is if your own boss is NOT supporting you resolving the technical issues via providing the suitable resources - and that's when your customer can put pressure on your boss to assist.
The communication of any message would provide opportunities - opportunities to enlist support and work out solutions. Talk to both your boss in terms of your expectations to enable you to resolve the issues at hand and re-set customer's expectations for budget and schedule. Talk to your customer about your approach to resolve and the options that could get a successful outcome. Giving them options would allow them to own the decision and support the direction you are taking.
For any project to recover, it requires on-going focus - daily meetings with your customer and boss to get on top of the issues and get the momentum going would kick start a recovery phase. Once the project is back on track you might choose to determine a different frequency.
Good Luck! Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Hi Karthik,
A very practical situation ! My opinion would be transparent with the customer, if I am closely connected with my customer, I would already shared the risks , open issues along with resolution plans in my weekly connects.
And most important thing is to keep all internal stakeholders informed.
Remember if we hiding the facts is nothing but triggering a time bomb which will eventually lead to lose of trust, which is very hard to regain.
