Two sites, one team, no trust

The principle of defined roles and responsibilities is failing in practice: the roles exist on paper but decisions are running through a private channel.

What is being bypassed:

• Collective board decision-making. The executive giving bilateral direction to a supplier lead bypasses the board and undermines the project manager's authority to deliver against agreed baselines. Ad hoc direction from the executive is legitimate, but it should be given to the project manager and recorded.
• The senior supplier role. Supplier commitment to resources, quality and estimates should be owned by the senior supplier, not negotiated informally by an engagement lead who may have no delegated authority to accept changed estimates.
• Project manager's single point of accountability for day-to-day delivery.

The consequence: estimates and commitments the board has not agreed are being treated as facts in Leeds, which is a direct cause of the trust problem, not a symptom of it.

What the project manager should do:

1. Raise the pattern as a concern in the issue register with concrete examples and dates.
2. Ask the board to confirm (a) who may direct whom, (b) the engagement lead's delegated authority, and (c) that estimate changes come through the project manager.
3. Establish a decision log so informal agreements are captured and visible, and brief the executive privately first - public correction in a board meeting would make the position worse.

The senior user is accountable for specifying the users' needs and the benefits the project will deliver, for committing user resources, and for user acceptance at each stage. Three missed meetings on a project with a fixed regulatory deadline is a substantive delivery risk, not a diary issue.

Suggested sequence:

• Assess the actual exposure. Are acceptance criteria agreed? Is user testing resourced? If the senior user's silence is masking unagreed requirements, the project's quality and schedule baselines are unsound and the board needs to know now.
• Speak to the executive as board chair, framing it as a board composition problem: the three project interests (business, user, supplier) are not being represented. Options include the senior user nominating a named deputy with delegated authority, or splitting user representation across business areas - both acceptable if agreed by the board and recorded in role descriptions.
• Log it. A risk entry plus an item in the next highlight report keeps it visible and protects the project manager if acceptance is disputed later.
• Do not simply proceed to sign-off without user involvement. Late user rejection is the most expensive outcome available here.

The stand-up addresses symptoms - information flow - but not the root causes, which are role ambiguity, capacity loss and a perceived two-tier team.

What the stand-up does well: gives the offshore and Leeds teams a shared daily forum and surfaces blockers early. Keep it, but cap it at 15 minutes and move decisions offline into a visible decision log.

What is missing:

• Capacity, not just communication. Three of five BA posts vacant plus 40% overtime for eight weeks is not sustainable; two resignations are the leading indicator. The project manager should quantify the impact on the stage plan and escalate it as a resourcing exception to the senior supplier, rather than absorbing it through overtime.
• Fair access to decisions. Staff believe decisions are made in calls they are not on. Publish the decision log, and make the single point of contact in each location explicit.
• A communications approach rather than an event. Who needs which information, how often, in which channel - including the supplier's line management chain, which the project manager does not control.
• Explicit conflict handling between the PM and the engagement lead, agreed ground rules for board behaviour, and private one-to-ones before the next board meeting.

Overtime is often the mechanism that hides a resourcing problem until it becomes a resignations problem.