A project manager negotiates most days and rarely calls it that. Scope, resources, schedule and priority are all settled by agreement with people who want something different, and PMI lists negotiating project agreements as a task in the People domain. The examination tests it with scenarios in which a functional manager, a sponsor or a supplier has stated a demand and the candidate must choose how the project manager responds.
The idea that does most of the work comes from Roger Fisher and William Ury's Getting to Yes, and it is the difference between a position and an interest. What a person says they want is a position. The reason they want it is their interest, and the two are separate far more often than they coincide. When a functional manager states that an engineer will not be available until April, they have given a position. The interest behind it could be a commitment of their own in March, a concern about losing the person permanently or the simple fact that nobody asked early enough for them to plan around it. Only one of those three is actually about April.
Negotiations get stuck on positions, because two incompatible positions leave nothing to do except split the difference or win outright. Interests can be traded. Two parties rarely want the same thing for the same reason, and a good agreement usually costs each side something the other values more.
Four positions and what sat underneath them
| What they said | The interest underneath | What that opened up |
|---|---|---|
| The date is the thirtieth of June and it is fixed | A board meeting where a working demonstration has to exist, which only part of the scope touches | A June release of the part the board will see, with the remainder following in August |
| We need the full export feature in this release | One customer who threatened to leave, and one report their analyst cannot produce by hand | A single report shipped in a fortnight, which holds the customer while the feature is built properly |
| This defect has to block the release | Being named in the review of the last incident that shipped knowingly | A recorded decision carrying the sponsor's name, and a fix committed to the next release |
| The team can take no more scope this quarter | An unfunded support rota already eating a third of every week | Funding the support work separately, which returns the capacity the new scope needs |
Everything in the right hand column follows from the same property. Interests can be traded, and positions can only be split or won. Finding the interest means asking why the thing is wanted, twice, in a tone that makes the answer safe to give. Where a person declines to say, the fallback is to guess aloud and invite correction, since a person who will not explain themselves will usually correct a wrong reading of their motives.
Preparing for the conversation
Asking why is easier when two things have been established before the conversation begins.
The first is what happens if there is no agreement. That alternative sets the point below which walking away is better than accepting, and it is a fact about the project manager's situation, whatever bargaining follows. A project manager who has not worked it out negotiates as though every outcome except agreement were unthinkable, which is visible from the other side of the table and expensive. Improving the alternative beforehand, by lining up a contractor or a different sequence, does more for a position than any amount of firmness in the room.
The second is why the other party wants what they have asked for. Establishing this means asking, and the question that opens it is some version of what would have to be true for this to work. Most people answer it, and the answer is often something that can be supplied cheaply.
What a project manager negotiates
Scope is negotiated whenever a stakeholder wants an addition and the honest answer is that it can happen if something else moves. Resources are negotiated with functional managers, who own the people and carry commitments of their own. Schedule is negotiated with sponsors, whose dates usually came from a market event or a board meeting and never from an estimate. Priority is negotiated constantly. Two urgent things submitted by two directors amount to a question about the organisation's preferences, and somebody has to put that question back to the organisation.
Of the four, priority is the one project managers most often try to solve by working harder. Doing so quietly turns a negotiation somebody should have held into overtime.
Negotiating inside an organisation
All four of those negotiations happen with colleagues, and internal negotiation differs from negotiation across a contract in one respect that changes everything. The same person will be met again, repeatedly, for years, and no signed document at the end makes the relationship irrelevant. A win extracted from a functional manager in March is paid for in September, at the point where a favour is needed and the memory is entirely intact.
The sustainable approach therefore separates the people from the problem, stays hard on the issue and easy on the person, and remains visibly willing to lose small points. It also makes candour cheaper than it looks. Explaining the constraint the project manager is actually under invites the other side to solve it, and a colleague who understands the problem will often find an option nobody had considered.
The negotiations nobody calls negotiations
Almost none of this reaches a diary under the heading of negotiation. Agreeing an acceptance criterion, asking for a week of a specialist's time, settling whether a defect ships or blocks the release and persuading a sponsor that a date is unavailable are all negotiations. Each has two parties, incompatible opening positions, interests underneath and an alternative if no agreement is reached.
Most of the benefit lies in noticing this, because the recognition changes what comes first. An unrecognised negotiation is conducted by asserting a position and waiting to see whose is louder, which is how a project manager loses an argument they had prepared nothing for. A recognised one begins with preparation and a question.