When mapping out escalation paths, I sort out between what are escalations to resolve a technical or process issue and what are escalations that are needed to resolve a business issue.

The first type of path involves resolving such issues as parts that never arrived, finding a staff replacement for someone that suddenly fell sick, etc. The other type of path involves resolving issues that are typically related to going outside of the original scope or resolving requests to engage resources that are clearly outside of the budget. This means that I actually have two escalation maps, instead of one. The maps may or may not intersect on some of the contacts, but they should not be identical.

As a project manager, you want to make sure you are not on the technical escalation path as there is usually very little added-value and it creates expectations that cannot be fulfilled. This mistake is a common one and causes a lot of unnecessary grief and can be avoided by labeling the paths accordingly - technical escalation vs. business escalation.