Sergio BarrakProject Manager| RiskAIXpertVantaa, Finland
Hi all!
Practicing for my exam, after answer tons of questions from few different providers, I'm not sure when the project manager should first inform (team, stakeholders, customer, key stakeholder, sponsor, etc) and then act (execute an action, review, plan, etc) or vice-versa.
Is there a general rule of thumb for it? How to base the decision in choosing act or inform?
As Kiron highlighted, it depends on context. Urgency (sometimes combined with impact) and common sense are good guidance.
For example: In a case of a viris attack on the prpject systems you act immediately (of course together with SME's), later you can inform. Or in case of fire, you act to get the team out of the building, later you can inform.
Change Request Procedure is a classic example where you first inform and then act based on approval. Saving Changes...
Manfred KressSenior Project Manager, PMP| Atos Information Technology GmbHTaunusstein, Germany
As Kiron and Peter already wrote, it depends...
In urgency or emergency cases information could be the best (or required) activity, on the other side activities are registered and by sending/transporting information. And don't worry, in such cases normally it doesn't matter because the time between acting and informing, or vis versa, is very short. And every one involved is happy that something happened.
The worst to do is loosing time by neither starting to inform nor to act because of producing (virtual) decision papers.
If you have the time to decide what is first: informing or acting, have a look at your Project Management Plan, esp. the Communication Plan or the appropriate plan. Saving Changes...
