Analyzing
Scope Creep
Most people have a little fear when it comes
to change, this can be positive or negative based on the reaction. I can
reflect back to scope creep (now that I know what it is) to getting my students
ready for state and national Skills USA competitions. Regardless of how well
planned and organized you are, you cannot possible anticipate people and
behavior. I had rosters planned, buses reserved, payments, uniforms, contest
supplies, meal tickets, and permission forms. Good gosh, could there be
anything else? Why yes, welcome to high school.
Scope Creep is known as “the natural tendency
of the client, as well as project team members, to try to improve the project’s
output as the project progresses”
(Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer,
2008, p. 350). My natural tendency is to include all the students. An
impossible task. As each day passes, my
student roster changes due to failing grades of the students. This causes
everything to change, buses, payments, contestants, etc. My problem seems to be
that I wanted more and more students to compete. I overburdened myself by
adding more students.
Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton,
& Kramer (2008), believe that with every project change there needs to be a
change order that includes a description of the agreed upon change and any
other changes to the plan, process, budget or schedule. For me this included
email communication with skills usa, the bus depot, the lunch committee, and of
course parents.
How to avoid or mange scope creep
Begin with a scope statement that spells out
the project and is agreed upon by the students (maintain passing grades) and
parents.
Payment penalty could work for this project
in that parents want a deal and therefore would submit payment before the due
date (no refund for failing grades) and encourage students to perform better in
all classes or risk losing money.
Managing change is important in that it could
be costly or could jeopardize the whole project. Using technology with this project simple
project helped me manage, rearrange and delete students without causing
disruption to the entire list that fed into and created other list. (Bus list
fed to the lunch list and so on).
The best approach to manage scope creep is to
set up a well-controlled, formal process whereby changes can be introduced and
accomplished with as little distress as possible using a change control system
(Portny 2008). A change control system is to do the following:
- Scope statement
- Communication and approval from stakeholders
- Use of technology to create small manageable sections
- Negotiate changes
Resources:
Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer,
S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project Management: Planning,
Scheduling, and Controlling Projects. Wiley & Sons Inc.
Sonya,
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate reason for scope creep is the "good idea fairy" of "GFI" effect, is that there always somethings that need to be added in order to complete a project or to make the project "better". As you stated the best way to prevent scope creep is to present the scope and stick to it, unless the additions would enable the project to be completed. The question to ask is, what would these additions do to the project? In your project, what was the reason for adding more students, was it for competition or to allow more students feel included?
Gil