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PMP Practice: Support team task accountability

Question 2 of 4 in Empower Team Members and Stakeholders

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Takeshi Morimoto is managing a medical device certification project for Arctic Fox Dynamics using a predictive approach. The project involves a series of regulatory submissions that require specialized engineering decisions. Three senior engineers on the team—each with deep expertise in different technical domains—have been asking Takeshi for approval on routine technical design choices such as material specifications, testing parameters, and documentation formats. These decisions are within their areas of expertise and do not affect project scope, budget, or schedule. However, the engineers continue to wait for Takeshi's explicit approval before proceeding, which is causing delays in completing deliverables. Takeshi has verified that organizational policies permit technical subject matter experts to make decisions within their domain of expertise. What should Takeshi do?
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Correct answer: Clearly communicate to the engineers which technical decisions they are authorized to make independently and establish boundaries for when escalation is needed

Explanation

The project manager should empower the technical experts by clearly defining their decision-making authority and establishing boundaries. Since these are routine technical decisions within their expertise that do not affect project constraints, and organizational policy permits such autonomy, the PM should explicitly authorize the engineers to proceed independently. This removes bottlenecks, demonstrates trust, accelerates delivery, and allows the PM to focus on higher-level project coordination. The key is providing clarity about which decisions require escalation versus which can be made autonomously—this is the essence of appropriate empowerment and delegation in project leadership.

**Why not A:** Documenting all technical decisions in the change log treats routine technical choices as change requests, which creates unnecessary overhead. These decisions are within the engineers' expertise and do not affect scope, budget, or schedule, so they do not require change management processes.

**Why not B:** Escalating to functional managers to instruct engineers is an indirect and hierarchical approach. The project manager should address the situation directly with the team members rather than involving their managers for what is fundamentally a delegation and empowerment conversation.

**Why not C:** Continuing to review and approve every technical decision perpetuates the bottleneck that is already causing delays. The engineers have deep expertise in their domains, and organizational policy permits their autonomy, so the PM's continued involvement adds no value while consuming six hours daily.

Key Concept

This question covers Support team task accountability under Empower Team Members and Stakeholders (People).

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