Notification And Escalation

By -

Notification And Escalation

During the project, you will need to inform management of issues, problems, and items that may or may not require their involvement. There are two mechanisms for keeping management involved: notification and escalation.

Notification

Notification is the act of informing management that an issue exists, that you currently have it under control, but that it could still pose a risk to the project. With notification, you do not expect any action on the part of management. If they do make suggestions or offer to act, you can thank them and either accept or decline their offer for now, depending upon the situation, but the purpose of notification is simply to make them aware of the issue and to alert them that there may be a problem in the future.

Escalation

When you escalate an issue, not only do you raise it to your management, you expect your management to act. Escalation is the process of assigning responsibility for an issue to one of your managers.

Like any task assignment, escalation must be managed. When you escalate, you will specify a completion date, and you will expect that appropriate actions will be taken and tasks completed. The only difference between escalation and any other work assignment is that escalation is an assignment given to management.

There are three reasons for escalating an issue. First, you may not have the authority to take action. For example, a major purchase needs to be approved, and only certain managers can approve it. If another manager who lacks authority tells you, "Oh, just go ahead and place the order. We'll worry about approvals later," it is reasonable to refuse until you have at least verbal approval.

Second, you may not have the experience to handle the issue. For example, you have identified a labor relations issue that needs to be negotiated with union representatives and you have no experience in labor negotiations. By handing the issue back to you, your management is imposing on you the responsibility for negotiating. If the issue has far-reaching consequences in the organization, then it will be resolved in a manner that management will probably not like.

Third, it may be more convenient for somebody in management to handle the issue because you are pressed for time, because the manager knows the people involved in the issue better than you do, or because it is the kind of issue that you detest but that one of your managers relishes.

Whatever the reason for escalating, let your management know why you have chosen to involve them and stress to them the importance of the issue to the project.

The Escalation Path

You will need to define the managers to whom you will provide notification and escalation. Normally the people to inform will be obvious, but there is one caution: Some managers ignore project issues that are raised to them (either as notification or as escalation) until the issues explode. Then they will indignantly ask why they were not told of the issue before this. If you point out the memo or the issues log in which the issue was raised, be prepared for some defensiveness and the comment, "I can't read everything that crosses my desk."

If this describes any of the managers to whom you will report, you must be more overt in raising issues. Drop in to the manager's office with a copy of the memo or issues log and point out the issue face to face. You need not be antagonistic; a simple "I thought you should know about this" will suffice.

What If?

Your Management Declines Responibility For The Issues.

If management turns the issue back to you, you may be placed in an untenable position if you lack authority or experience in the area. Furthermore, if you attempt to handle the issue and your efforts backfire, you could be held personally responsible for taking action beyond your mandate or background.

Actions

Review the issue to determine whether the issue is something that you can reasonably handle. If so, handle it.

If the issue properly belongs to management, meet with the appropriate managers, point out why you cannot or should not handle it, and request that somebody in management do so.

If management still insist that you resolve the issue, document privately that you have tried to escalate it and that you have pointed out why you believe it is a management issue.

Depending on the issue and its seriousness, as well as your position in the organization, you may decide to proceed or to refuse to handle the issue.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Conversion Cycle:The Traditional Manufacturing Environment

By -
Image
The Traditional Manufacturing Environment The conversion cycle consists of both physical and information activities related to manufacturing products for sale. The context-level data flow diagram (DFD) in Figure 7-1 illustrates the central role of the conversion cycle and its interactions with other business cycles. Production is triggered by customer orders from the revenue cycle and/or by sales forecasts from marketing. These inputs are used to set a production target and prepare a production plan, which drives production activities. Purchase requisitions for the raw materials needed to meet production objectives are sent to the purchases procedures (expenditure cycle), which prepares purchase orders for vendors. Labor used in production is transmitted to the payroll system (expenditure cycle) for payroll processing. Manufacturing costs associated with intermediate work-in-process and finished goods (FG) are sent to the general ledger (GL) and financial reporting system. Dependin...
Read more

The Revenue Cycle:Manual Systems

By -
Image
Manual Systems The purpose of this section is to support the system concepts presented in the previous section with models depicting people, organizational units, and physical documents and files. This section should help you envision the segregation of duties and independent verifications, which are essential to effective internal control regardless of the technology in place. In addition, we highlight inefficiencies intrinsic to manual systems, which gave rise to modern systems using improved technologies. SALES ORDER PROCESSING The system flowchart in Figure 4-12 shows the procedures and the documents typical to a manual sales order system. In manual systems, maintaining physical files of source documents is critical to the audit trail. As we walk through the flowchart, notice that in each department, after completion of the assigned task, one or more documents are filed as evidence that the task was completed. Sales Department The sales process begins with a customer cont...
Read more

HIPO (hierarchy plus input-process-output)

By -
Image
HIPO (hierarchy plus input-process-output) 64.1 Purpose The HIPO (Hierarchy plus Input-Process-Output) technique is a tool for planning and/or documenting a computer program. A HIPO model consists of a hierarchy chart that graphically represents the program’s control structure and a set of IPO (Input-Process-Output) charts that describe the inputs to, the outputs from, and the functions (or processes) performed by each module on the hierarchy chart. 64.2 Strengths, weaknesses, and limitations Using the HIPO technique, designers can evaluate and refine a program’s design, and correct flaws prior to implementation. Given the graphic nature of HIPO, users and managers can easily follow a program’s structure. The hierarchy chart serves as a useful planning and visualization document for managing the program development process. The IPO charts define for the programmer each module’s inputs, outputs, and algorithms. In theory, HIPO provides valuable long-term documentation. However...
Read more