Negotiation

Negotiation during the Project Management
As a project Manager you must be facing real challenges while tracking the status or when it comes to execution as per the plan or when you are supposed to start the next phase of the project, the previous phase not finished on time. I think the last scenario is the one usually it happens in case of Finish to Start dependency. In any of these situations, one common constraint or the challenge you face in the real world is that you can’t push the committed delivery date or reduction in scope. How to overcome these situations? Negotiation plays a vital role to overcome the challenge.
When I was Project Manager for one of the projects a few years back, the typical challenge came in front of me with respect to the delivery of product. I was heading the Testing function and we all know that this is the last phase of the life cycle before deployment or handing over to the customer. The product was from the IT industry and typical water fall life cycle was used. The delivery date was committed to the customer on 31st Dec (Internal date was 27th Dec with 3 days of reserve) assuming that there is no stopper defect detected during the last minute. We were supposed to get the build on 30th Nov and the testing was supposed to start on 1st Dec. But on 20th Nov we came to know that there is a delay of 13 days from the development team. The figure 13 days came after the re-estimation by the respective project manager. When I heard this news, the first thing it came to my mind was, I am going to miss the New Year party. From my side to deliver the product after testing to customer even after consuming that 3 days reserve, I will not be able to deliver on 31st Dec. At this point of time option left to me was to cut down the testing which leads to compromise on quality and indirectly de-scope which is not a good decision or to run the testing with fast tracking which was not possible after analysing the critical path or to increase the resource which is crashing. Here the best option was to increase the resource even though there will be increase in the cost and reduction in the profit margin. I reworked on the resource planning so as to meet the 31st Dec milestone. This demanded about 3 resources additional. When I submitted the data to my supervisor the answer was refusal and demanding to work on weekends and over time with the available resources. I was against this, as this will decrease the quality of the deliverables and de-motivate the team because there is no fault from their side. Now the negotiation started with my supervisor with data, how compromising in the quality of testing results in the increase of rework cost and also the reputation of the organisation. There was a long discussion and analysis between me and my supervisor by playing with triple constraint and cost of quality. Ultimately my proposal was honoured and got the approval of 3 resources with desired skill.
How? Negotiate with right data and showing the win-win situation considering the short term and long term business perspective. As a Project Manager learn to negotiate from the project interest point of view and of course with right data and right assumption.