During any project it´s normal that appear issues. Some of these issues will have impact on the schedule causing delays to dates committed with the customer and that impact their business, in one way or the other or they are supposed to ….
The project manager and the whole team will try to find solutions for the problem to get solved, some of them implying third parties on the project or authorizations or other processes ( shipments, purchases, …) that may require some time to happen, and often with its own delays.
The PM, of course, has communicated to the customer the plan, the expected new date and any conditions that may affect this new date.
While these process are executed by the team, the customer gets angry and decides to escalate the issue to upper management. Upper management talks with the customers and shows commitment to solve the issue and communicates without any details that action will be taken so that the problem gets solved inmediately.
In the meanwhile, and without any cause-effect relation with the escalation, the process that was in execution finishes..
Conclusion by the customer: the escalation has been effective and has solved the problem that the team was not solving properly…… Next time, I will escalate sooner, it´s the only way to solve problems in an effective way and not wasting time.
Please, who has lived something similar to that?