TOPIC: PM Relationship with Business Case

Hey folks, saw a question on a Facebook forum that had an answer I didn't agree with, wanted to get some additional input. The question essentially involved a group of key stakeholders approaching the project manager indicating they didn't feel the project should have been approved and wouldn't bring benefit to the organization and what the PM should do. The two viable answers were:

A) Facilitate a discussion with the group to review the business case
Raise the issue to the project sponsor.

The person who posed the question indicated that the answer was A, but I feel it should be B. The project manager does not have responsibility for the business case, the sponsor does. Anything that could pose risk to the viability of the project should be raised to the sponsor in my opinion. I don't feel the business case is within the PM's authority. Am I off-base with my analysis of this question?

Kyle,

Generally you want to resolve things at your level before bumping them up the food chain. Project managers are leaders. The answer is "A"

Harry
(NOTE: I had a typo in my original answer that didn't align with my reasoning in the previous post.)

Spot on Kyle!

I agree with you 100%

Hi Harry,

Thanks for your reply, although I'm still not convinced! I don't think it would be a valuable use of the PM's time to facilitate a discussion without the sponsor present. The business case is not the responsibility of the PM, and furthermore, the stakeholders claim they weren't confident that the project would benefit the organization - calling into question the reason why the project was initiated. If the project's viability is threatened, the sponsor should be involved. Can you shed any more light on why you feel A is correct? I think this is one of the rare instances where it is not valuable for the PM to facilitate a discussion first as he does not have authority over the document in question.

Thanks,

Kyle

Good morning, Kyle (at least morning where I'm at!)

I recall a similar question on the PrepCast simulator and I also got it wrong by bumping it up the food chain. The answer was similar to mine regarding the PM being a leader and taking care of things at the lowest level.

I think that in many organizations, we are constrained by our work rules that state when there is a conflict, bump it up. However, the PMP exam is not about how we as individuals would handle any given situation; it's all about how PMI and the PMBOK would handle situation. Therefore in order to pass the exam, we have to answer how PMI would handle a given scenario, not how we individually would do it. Always keep this in mind: All PMP Exam questions must be answered from PMI's perspective, not from our own experiences.

Good luck!

Harry