Everyday Scope Creep

For this week's assignment, we had to identify a project in which scope creep took place. I have to admit that I'm a little late in posting this because I couldn't think of a situation in which scope creep actually happened to me personally, or a team that I was on. So, I will talk about a kind of "scope creep" that I have witnessed. By the way, for those reading this that aren't in my Walden classes, "scope creep" is what happens when you are working on a project and the scope is either ill-defined or not strictly followed, and the amount of work or nature of work starts to increase and/or change in unexpected ways as a result.

The first example I can think of is a project where the scope is well-articulated but ill-conceived. I was able to come up with this example after reading my friend David Smith's blog post on his home project adventures. I remember an example from when I was young where my grandparents wanted to flatten a side of a hilly patch on their one acre back yard with my mom and I. The hilly patch was about seven to ten feet high, about seven feet wide, and thirty feet long. The plan was to rent a rototiller and manually churn the hill, then shove the mud into wheelbarrows and dump them on some exposed tree roots in the back of the yard. So we had a plan and knew what everyone would be doing. However, the work was backbreaking and grueling. The mud was hard clay and packed in earth, and it wasn't long before the earth was very rocky, and the rototiller was having a tough time getting through the earth. After a very long day-and-a-half of work. At one point, my mom said that she thought this had gone too far, and that she thought the job would be better done with an earth mover, such as a Caterpillar. Grandma disagreed with that idea, perhaps because she already felt committed to making the original plan work. Eventually, she relented and a professional earth mover came out to look at the job. He said it would only take him an hour to finish it, and by the way, the clay we were throwing on the tree roots were going to kill the tree. So it was a good thing we called him. Sometimes the scope can seem just right when in fact the scope was poorly designed to begin with. A little more analysis on the front-end might have made us all realize that the job was too big for us and what we had planned.

My second example is what I'll call "association/affiliation/partnership scope creep. This is when a company is partnered with another company, often a customer/client of some kind, in which the nature of benefits and perks of being a "number one customer" or highly valued customer, are not clearly defined, and the customer keeps nibbling and slowly creeping and ratcheting up the demands on the service-providing company. I've seen the companies in the "number one" spot dictate all kinds of terms to the service providing companies I've worked for, to the point that the service-providing company is making special exceptions to company policy, forcing employees to undergo several extra-invasive security protocols to make the client comfortable, bumping the client to the first in queue for service over several other customers, and pretty much whatever else the customer demands. This seems like the company-equivalent of codependency or unhealthy boundaries, and it can have devastating consequences for both companies: One company ends up bending over backwards and compromising it's standards and corporate identity to appease the customer, and the client develops unrealistic expectations and gets frustrated with the service provider when these expectations are not met. If the associate were looked at like a special type of project, you could create a statement of work for the special customer, and spell out all of the specific benefits the special status or partnership affords them, and also what the limits are--the deal-breaking things the service-providing company cannot or will not do, so don't ask. Agree to certain perks and then stick to them! If the client company wants (or demands) more, then that would require a new contract or statement of work, and both parties would have to agree to the new written terms. The service providing company retains it's identity and stabilizes its work load, and the client is happy because they know what to expect and they're getting it, and they still have a "special status" with the service company.

So those are my examples of "scope creep." They may not be dead on the money, but it at least hits on some scope creep elements...

Thanks for reading!

Resources for PM Budgeting, Scheduling, and More

            Being a project manager can often feel like a daunting task if you focus too much on the entirety of the project. Fortunately, there are an amazing wealth of resources aimed at helping new project managers or experienced project managers looking to update their practices. This week, I did a little hunting around and found a few such resources for your consideration.

            The first is a site called www.brighthubpm.com. Specifically, I took a look at their templates and forms page, found here: http://www.brighthubpm.com/templates-forms/124740-collection-of-free-project-management-templates-and-forms/. I find that forms and templates help me to stay organized and break down large projects into manageable chunks of information, and this site has forms for every step of the project management process. Specifically, it has a link on how to create a RACI or RASCI chart, which Stolovitch mentions in this week’s reference materials. The RASCI (Responsible, Accountable, Support, Consulted, Informed) is a matrix chart that delineates all of the work tasks to be completed on a project, and who is supposed to complete the work and so forth. Each task is assigned to a person or people, and given an estimation as to the duration of hours it will take to compete the task. This can also be used to generate budget considerations, too. Simply generate a cost per hour estimate given the specific people assigned to the tasks, and any and all tools and resources they will need. A word of caution is to remember that what is “needed” should be measured against the approved budget and modified accordingly if necessary. www.brighthubpm.com has a lot of other great templates too, such as when it comes to scheduling and other planning phases…

            One site said that the hardest budget you will ever have to put together is your first one. Budgeting for beginners is difficult because, again there is a lot to consider and some “hidden” or indirect costs can be missed in the budgeting process. This blog post along with this week’s resources, helped me to think of budget as a matter of time as well as money. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/creating-your-project-budget-where-to-begin/ The site’s page also covers common mistakes to avoid in creating the budget. This is helpful because more than half the battle of creating plans, schedules, and budgets are thinking about them in a productive and thorough way. Any resource that helps orient you to a better understanding of the budget is helpful.

            A final resource worth sharing is Cathy Moore’s site. In this blog post, as well as others she talks about how to create value in E-Learning that is also budget-friendly. http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2010/05/how-to-design-elearning-thats-memorable-and-budget-friendly/ Cathy Moore’s blog emphasis on value reminds me that every budgetary consideration should start with the question of value, and how it will increase training effectiveness. By focusing on this emphasis, you begin to realize that you don’t need to develop something you originally thought was essential in the project, or reevaluate the budget plan after assessing the project as a whole. This “meta-budgetary” question can lead to weeding out a great deal of cost-suckers that aren’t really adding value to the training project, and keep the project on-budget.

            What do you find difficult about creating a PM budget? Let me know if you find any of these resources useful in the comments below!