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Project Management vocabulary · Risks & Issues

Escalate

Meaning in project management, with examples

/ˈeskəleɪt/verbCore term

In project management, escalate means: To pass a problem, risk or decision to someone with more authority because it cannot be solved at the current level.

In Turkish: üst kademeye taşımak, eskale etmek, üst yönetime iletmek

How it is used

Very common in project emails and meetings. You escalate an issue to the sponsor, the steering committee or senior management. The noun is escalation, and many projects have an escalation path or process.

Example sentences

  1. The vendor still hasn't answered, so I'm going to escalate this to their account director.

  2. Any issue that could delay the launch by more than a week must be escalated to the sponsor.

Common collocations

  • escalate an issue
  • escalate to the sponsor
  • escalation path
  • need to escalate
  • issueA problem that is already happening and affects the project, so someone needs to take action to solve it.
  • steering committeeA group of senior managers and key stakeholders who give a project direction, make major decisions, approve big changes and help solve escalated problems.
  • project sponsorA senior manager who owns the business reason for a project, secures its funding, makes the big decisions and supports the project manager when problems need higher authority.
  • blockerSomething that completely stops a person or team from continuing their work until it is removed, such as a missing approval, access or decision.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Risks & Issues

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