The Stakeholder Who Won't Sign
You are leading an ERP finance-module rollout for a mid-sized manufacturer. The project is 70% complete and on schedule. The CFO, who is the executive sponsor, has stopped attending steering meetings and has twice deferred sign-off on the chart-of-accounts design, which is a prerequisite for the next phase. Her deputy says she is "uncomfortable with the direction" but cannot articulate why. Meanwhile, the controller - who reports to the CFO - is actively cooperating and has flagged that the proposed account structure differs from how the finance team actually reports to the board. The next phase cannot start without the design sign-off, and the schedule buffer is 10 working days.
1. Diagnose the sponsor's disengagement and describe your next move.
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The symptoms - non-attendance, repeated deferral without stated objection, and a deputy who can only report "uncomfortable" - point to unresolved concern the sponsor has not voiced, most likely because the design conflicts with something she is accountable for. The controller's flag is the strongest clue: if the proposed account structure does not match how finance reports to the board, the CFO is being asked to sign off on something that will create reporting problems she will own. Her silence is not indifference; it is a sign-off she cannot defend.
Next move:
- Get a direct, private conversation with the CFO - not another steering meeting. Ask specifically what the design would need to show for her to be comfortable signing, and listen for the reporting-to-board issue.
- Bring the controller's finding to that conversation explicitly, framed as a design question rather than a complaint: does the account structure need to preserve board reporting dimensions?
- If confirmed, treat it as a design change, assess impact against the 10-day buffer, and bring a revised design to sign-off rather than pushing for approval of the current one.
The judgment: a sponsor who defers without explaining is signaling a conflict between the project and their accountability. Escalating pressure for sign-off without diagnosing the concern will produce a signature you cannot rely on.
2. The schedule buffer is 10 days. How do you decide whether to spend it on a design revision or to escalate the delay?
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First, distinguish the two problems: the design issue is a quality/correctness risk (a structure that breaks board reporting will be reworked after go-live, at far higher cost), while the schedule is a time risk. Spending buffer to fix a correctness problem is usually the right trade - rework in production is more expensive than 10 days now - but only if the fix is bounded.
Decision logic:
- Estimate the design revision against the controller's finding. If it fits within the buffer with margin, spend the buffer, document the reason, and reset expectations with the steering committee.
- If the revision exceeds the buffer, do not silently absorb it. Escalate with a clear choice: extend the phase, reduce phase scope, or accept the reporting risk in writing - and make clear that the last option requires the CFO to own that risk, which she is unlikely to accept.
- Either way, do not start the next phase on an unsigned design. The buffer exists to absorb exactly this kind of discovered dependency.
The judgment being tested: buffers are for known-unknowns like this, and using one to prevent downstream rework is not schedule failure - it is schedule management. The failure mode is spending the buffer without telling anyone, or escalating before you have sized the fix.