Question

When a customer or a powerful manager pushes a bad idea on a Project Manager (PM), a PM must learn "intelligent disobedience," that is, the ability to say "no" to demands that might put the project and, thus the company, in harm's way. If you were a PM facing a bad idea from a customer or a powerful manager, how would you say "no"?

Answer 1

Answer)
There can be the situation for a project manager in which a customer or a powerful manager may push a bad idea onto the project and then push the team and manager to fulfill that requirement either at the starts, mid-way or at the closure of the project. Here is a project manager, we should learn to be tactical and also have intelligent disobedience, as the kinds of the demands the customer or some other manager pushed us to fulfill may push the project or company in harm's way and thus the project may be jeopardized. Thus the unrealistic demands should not be fulfilled by the project manager and should be tactically declined with valid reasons.

If we were a project manager facing such a bad idea from a customer or a powerful manager we have to tactically respond to the situation. We should start from the requirements in the initial phase, the efforts, and money which have been invested for the development and project activities to occur, the talent pool and sucroses which we are having currently, put the facts on the table, and present what has been developed as per the requirements of the customers. Thus, when the customers present some unrealistic demands, it cannot be fulfilled because of financial, resources or time constraint and as a project manager we have to make the customers realize that everything has occurred as per the pre-defined plan and thus we cannot fulfill the unrealistic demands and thus say no or decline politely saying that this will create problems for the project and also we will not assure the quality of the product or service if some unrealistic demands are presented by the customers or powerful managers.