Scope creep may cause you to miss a deadline, burn through (or exceed!) your budget with cost overruns, and, on top of that, still deliver the wrong thing (The Digital Project Manager, 2021). Identifying scope creep early helps you formulate the best approach for addressing the issue (The Digital Project Manager, 2021). Dr. Stolovitch speaks about maintaining continuous communication through frequent check-ins with your team and even daily project status requirements to ensure projects remain on track and challenges are recognized immediately that could affect the timeline (Walden, n.d.). My experience with software implementation projects has provided me with firsthand observation of the consequences of lack of communication and the effect it has on scope creep. Examples include project managers who don’t provide clear expectations of deliverables so team members underestimate the complexity or resources required to complete tasks, team members who do not address concerns early on that ultimately end up stagnating progress, and managers who want to add last-minute additions that they think are simple executions but turn out to be significant modifications. One of the most prevalent forms of miscommunication in software projects comes from project managers who do not properly engage everyone who is going to be affected by the technology change. Many times, this issue does not come to light until the end of the project when the software is presented for employee training and utilization. Employees begin to ask questions about how the software can be used for their own workload and discover their needs have not been addressed at all. This occurs when project managers do not ask the right questions during software sourcing calls because they have not gathered essential requirements for how the software will be used throughout the entire company. Even if the project was only requested by one department, project managers have to do their due diligence and research the overall effect such a significant change will have on other organizational departments or processes. Once software goes into a Production phase of implementation, any changes afterward are costly and will require downtime in the system to make the requested changes, so ensuring proper testing and all requirements have been met before proceeding with coding is essential to avoid scope creep or costly additional future phases. Contingency plans can be helpful to proactively plan to mitigate risk, but project managers need to be well versed in saying “No” and communicating to stakeholders the gravity that additional changes will have on the scope of work, budget, and project timeline.
References
The, & Haworth, S. (2021, September 14). Stop Scope from Creeping: What It Is & How To Manage. The Digital Project Manager; The Digital Project Manager. https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/projects/scope-management/scope-creep/
Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Monitoring projects [Video file]. Retrieved from https://waldenu.instructure.com
Communication is key! That seems to be an important factor in the success of a project. We previously learned about different communication methods, such as face-to-face, over the phone, and e-mail.
How do we know when, what to speak, and how much to communicate? Is it better to have too much communication or too little communication?
Depending on the project, if it is a small project and the management gives the green light, daily reports may not be needed. However, communication should be done more regularly if we have a prominent project, a big budget, a cross-functional team, and several stakeholders involved (How to Deliver Project Status, 2023).
Programs such as Microsoft Teams offer functions that can assist with reports. I have been a part of projects that required me to do daily check-ins with my group and read documents posted to keep me aware of the progress. If I didn’t do my part and checked it regularly, and then later down the road, I had an issue with a part of the plan, it would be my fault for not reading the posted reports.
References
How to deliver project status. (2023). Project Smart. https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/best-practice/how-to-deliver-project-status.php
Contingency plans and communication are crucial key players in navigating scope creep. With the increase in different ways to communicate, what would you use to communicate with your team in your example to effectively communicate and mitigate scope creep?
Chelsi
Reference
Malsam, W. (2021, May 26). What is scope creep and how can I avoid it? Project Management. Retrieved April 14, 2024 from https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/5-ways-to-avoid-scope-creep