Resistant Frontline Staff and Three Accountable Owners
A project manager is leading an 18-month project to replace paper case files with a digital records system for a public health agency. The budget is $4.6 million and the go-live is fixed by a ministerial commitment. Forty stakeholder groups are mapped; the engagement assessment shows the 120 frontline records clerks, who will use the system daily, as 'resistant', and their union representative has filed a formal consultative notice about role changes. A senior operations manager, who controls the release of staff for training, publicly called the system 'a cost-cutting exercise' at a town hall. The project has two sub-teams in different cities; each claims ownership of the requirements baseline, and the RACI chart shows three people with 'A' on the same deliverable. Training is scheduled for month 14 of 18, and only 22 percent of clerks have completed the pre-training survey.
1. How should the PM analyse and engage the resistant clerks and the senior operations manager?
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The resistance is not primarily a communication problem; it is a perceived job-impact problem. Map the clerks as high-interest, low-formal-power but high operational influence, and the operations manager as high-power, high-interest. For the clerks, meet the union representative before any wider briefing, share the actual role-impact analysis, involve clerks in workflow design and testing, and recruit champions from the frontline. Replace vague reassurance with specific, verifiable information about redeployment, workload and training time. For the operations manager, hold a private, evidence-based meeting to understand the objection. If it is about staff release, negotiate a training schedule with dates and backfill; if it is about the system, offer a joint review of the benefits case. Ask the sponsor to reinforce the mandate. Move the clerks from resistant to neutral before aiming for supportive; expecting immediate support is unrealistic. Measure progress through survey response, attendance and the issue log, not through emails sent. Record commitments in the engagement plan and review them monthly.
2. What should the PM do about the conflicting requirements ownership and the three 'A's in the RACI?
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Three accountable owners on one deliverable is a decision-rights defect, not a documentation error. Convene the two sub-team leads and the three named people; agree one accountable owner per deliverable, with the others as consult or informed. Use a facilitated workshop to define the boundary of the requirements baseline: which team owns which requirements, how changes are raised, who arbitrates and what the definition of done is. Publish a revised RACI and a decision log. If the leads cannot agree, escalate to the sponsor with a one-page options paper; do not let the ambiguity drift into build, where it becomes expensive rework. For the cross-city conflict, use a single backlog and written decision records, and alternate meeting times so remote participants are not disadvantaged. The test of success is that a requirement change has one clear route to a decision and one named owner, not that everyone feels consulted.
3. What communication approach should the PM put in place for this project?
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The communication plan should be audience-specific. For clerks and the union: monthly briefings, a named contact, a visible question-and-feedback channel, and consultation milestones aligned to the formal notice. For the operations manager and other staff-releasing managers: a short monthly update with the specific asks, dates and consequences of non-release. For the steering committee: a one-page dashboard covering schedule, cost, engagement level, top risks and decisions required. For the two sub-teams: weekly stand-ups, a single source of truth and written decisions. The plan should specify who sends what, to whom, by when and through which channel, and should measure engagement rather than output-survey response rates, attendance, issues raised and resolved. The PM should also prepare an escalation route for when consultation deadlines or training release dates are at risk, and use it early rather than after the go-live date is threatened.