What is escalation process ?
Answers
The general meaning of Escalation is: Increase in magnitude or intensity by bypassing the immediate person.
Applied to the project context, escalation is generally a formal process to highlight the issue at hand to a higher authority as per the escalation mechanism defined for the project. For example, if a certain project stakeholder is not willing to or is not able to do a certain activity he or she is responsible for, it is necessary to escalate the issue to the superior for resolution.
Risks or Issues related to project objectives, resource and inter-group conflicts, ambiguous roles and responsibilities, scope disagreements, third party dependencies are some known situations calling for escalations. Such issues require higher level intervention because many times the authority, decision making, resources or effort required to resolve them are beyond a project manager’s horizon. At times, the project manager may want to involve higher authorities for information-only escalations to keep them abreast of potential issues in the project.
Understanding the right use of escalation technique is vital for project managers. Escalation should be treated as a professional act and should be done in an effective way. Project managers should escalate timely if something is blocking the project and is beyond the project manager’s control. One should not hesitate to escalate within the performing organization and in the client’s organization as well. A proactive escalation and risk communication is far better than unpleasant surprises requiring costly fixes to the project.
However, escalation is a simple-to-use technique most of the times, though it can be easily documented in the plans and processes.
Why it is difficult to escalate?
Escalation, though a known and formal mechanism, is a dicey art a project manager has to cultivate to effectively resolve project bottlenecks. However, many a times, a project manager is hesitant to escalate the matter, some key reasons being:
Escalation is an immediate conflict and clash creator as it is taken as a complaint against the person involved in the issue.
Escalation leads to counterattack and revenge as people tend to take escalation personally and not professionally.
Many people simply give up or suffer in silence because they hesitate to escalate due to fear of backlash or anger of the person.
Some Project managers feel ego issues in escalating the matter or communicating project risks.
Some project managers prefer to struggle with the issue using available resources too long before requesting assistance (under the assumption that they will be able to solve it themselves).
Junior or new project managers will not dare to escalate against experienced team members, senior management or client side people.
Escalation builds a perception that the project is out of control and the project manager is not able to manage it.
Some project managers do not know how to use the escalation mechanism to solve the problem.
The PMO has not created a generic escalation plan, or there is no specific escalation plan at the project level.