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PMP Practice: Support and recognize team member growth and development

Question 2 of 4 in Support Team Performance

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Blaze Traoré-Mitchell manages a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility upgrade project for Churro Lightning Co. During the mid-project performance review cycle, she discovers that Cosmo Reyes-Nakashima, a senior quality assurance engineer, has completed 85% of his planned deliverables but missed two critical validation milestones. The project charter defines success criteria including regulatory compliance timelines. When Lila reviews Kenji's performance data, she finds he has been pulled into unplanned support requests by the VP of Operations, who is a key sponsor and has explicitly told Kenji these requests are 'top priority for the business.' The VP is not attending steering committee meetings and appears unaware of the impact on project timelines. Kenji's performance metrics show strong quality of work but declining schedule adherence. The next regulatory submission window closes in six weeks. What should Lila do?
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Correct answer: Meet with the VP of Operations to discuss the competing priorities, clarify the project's regulatory constraints, and collaborate on a protocol for handling urgent operational requests without derailing critical project milestones

Explanation

This scenario tests stakeholder engagement and performance management in the context of competing organizational priorities. The closing facts establish that the VP is a key sponsor who is acting with good intentions but lacks visibility into project impacts, Kenji's actual work quality is strong, and the root cause is misalignment rather than performance failure. The most effective approach is to address the stakeholder misalignment directly by engaging the VP, providing transparency about regulatory constraints, and collaboratively establishing a sustainable protocol. This treats the VP as a partner in project success, preserves the relationship with a key sponsor, protects Kenji from conflicting direction, and solves the systemic issue rather than just documenting its symptoms. The project manager's role includes ensuring stakeholders understand trade-offs and making informed decisions about resource allocation.

**Why not B:** Documenting the performance gap in a formal review and establishing that project work takes priority treats the symptom as the engineer's failure when the root cause is competing organizational direction. The VP of Operations is redirecting the resource, and penalizing the engineer for following a senior executive's instructions would be unfair and counterproductive.

**Why not C:** Asking the engineer to work additional hours to cover both commitments is unsustainable and shifts the burden of organizational misalignment onto the individual. This approach does not resolve the competing priorities and creates burnout risk while leaving the systemic problem unaddressed.

**Why not D:** Escalating and requesting formal authority to block operational requests is adversarial toward a key sponsor. The VP is acting with good intentions but lacks visibility into project impacts. Collaborative engagement to establish a shared protocol is more effective than seeking authority to override a senior executive.

Key Concept

This question covers Support and recognize team member growth and development under Support Team Performance (People).

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