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I am the manager of 7 engineers and each is tasked with delivering on multiple projects each with its own set of deadlines set primarily externally and often without input from the engineers on my team.  As such, I am in a constant battle with project managers, stakeholders and others regarding resource utilization.  (Everyone's projects are the highest priority to them, aren't they?)  So, when a particular discussion takes place between the PM and the engineer assigned concerning my engineer's projection of when to get a certain thing done it is usually too far away for the PM or stakeholder and is thus immediately escalated to either yours truly or worse, my boss, the director.  Naturally, this puts me in the doghouse with the boss.  Any thoughts or suggestions on how to handle these not infrequent escalations for resource and time?

BeManager's picture

This is not my area of expertise but I figured I would try to help.  The first thing that came to my mind was ensuring parties are on the same page before these decisions have to be made.  Some kind of shared platform or standard communication by you that can help the project managers understand all of the deadlines/commitments before adding additional deadlines/commitments to the mix.  Depending how it is set up, it could then give some context to what happens if they make a commitment with a stakeholder of X date, it will also impact the completion of projects Y, and Z.  This might cause these types of conversations to happen earlier and with you to determine options instead later and with your boss when you can't meet their unrealistic deadlines they already commited to.  It sounds good in my head, but this is also probably already something you are doing.  Anyways, just my quick thoughts.

Good Luck!