My Personal Example of a Scope Creep
Project
When
my children set out to re-design their bedrooms a few years back for a more
grown up look, my daughter got her room done in two weekends on the theory that
she fast tracked only her most desired changes. Unwittingly, she followed Dr. Stolovitch’s advice: “make a list of all the different activities,
prioritized them as high, medium or low, and don’t try to be
perfect”(Stolovitch, n.d.a). My son, on the other hand, let scope creep
happen as he considered too many options to realistically implement and thus,
his room was not renovated for nearly a year.
What specific scope creep issues
occurred?
Some
form of scope creep occurs where either more tasks are added to the project
along the way, or “Parkinson’s Law [takes affect which] states that work will expand
to fill the amount of time allotted” (Portny et al., 2008, p. 166). My son really did not plan well for the
project and made the false assumption that his resources (aka mom, dad and
their money) would be always available and unlimited. He had also never
undertaken such a big project of such personal importance before. After all, this was going to be his personal
statement – his bedroom redo. He
generally fell into an overall feeling of caution and chaos so commonly
experienced by newcomers to project management.
He soon figured out that, not money necessarily, but “time is the
scarcest resource” (Stolovitch, n.d.b) when he just couldn’t always pin his
parents down to go to Home Depot or Walmart for this or that.
How did you or other stakeholders
deal with those issues at the time?
He
actually resented my daughter for her rapid results and immediately claimed
that she had been favored with more of our time to get things done. We explained to him that we had initially
been on the ready for him too, if only he had created a solid plan upon which
we could take immediate action. We then spent
a lot of time planning with our son, which turned out to be a valuable
experience for all of us, but it didn’t progress the bedroom makeover much. Well, there was the light switches, the trim,
the paint colors, the line designs. He
was paralyzed by the details and the plethora of options and decisions to be
made, but we let him muddle through it all on his own. All we did was taxi him to his requested shopping
destinations when time allowed and pulled out the credit card. He ended up with
a tri-colored blue, striped room with mirror accents and a black ceiling! Ugh!
But he liked it and it was finally finished in about 12 months.
What could you have done to better
manage these issues and control the scope of the project better?
As
parents (aka: the boss) we could have established more defined parameters for
our son including a clear time table within in which he could focus his
decisions and activities more rapidly. For our son’s part, he should have
established a clear vision of the project for himself from the beginning to
include anticipating those obstacles along the way. He eventually learned some valuable
communication strategies during this project and ultimately inspired us with
his negotiation skills. For both
children, however, my husband and I knew to make one major contingency plan: we
“set time and money aside for obstacles” (Rekom, n.d.).
References
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S.
M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008).
Project management: Planning,
scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley
& Sons, Inc.
Rekom,V. (n.d.). Practitioner voices:
Planning for contingencies presented for Laureate Education, Inc.
Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_551248_1%26url%3D
Stolovitch.
(n.d.a). Managing projects presented for Laureate Education, Inc.
Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_551248_1%26url%3D
Stolovitch. (n.d.b). Creating a
project schedule presented for Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_551248_1%26url%3D
