My Experience with Scope Creep

I define scope creep as changes to a project that cause it to grow beyond its original intent.  These changes can come from new technologies, the client or team members (Portny, Kramer, Mantel, Meredith, & Shafer, 2007).

At the moment, I am involved in a project that is going through some changes.  Our client wanted a newer interface for their courseware that could be used with all devices.  That in itself was not a problem.  We started working on converting all courseware to this new interface, however (to my knowledge) there was never a discussion about standards and conventions that would be used with this new interface.  For example, what colors would be used and how, how would lesson menus be setup, and how would prompts be worded.  This was a recipe for scope creep.

As developers, since there really wasn’t any guidance, we just used the standards we used in the past, but then came to find out that some things did not really transfer well.  What ended up happening was everyone was doing something a little bit different, so there was no continuity between lessons.  The management realized the problem and provided us with a document that solved some of the issues we had already encountered.

By not having a design document, we were doing double work.  Along with that, as new issues were discovered, we (the developers) would come up with a solution, inform the project manager for approval or disapproval.  The problem with that was, the approved solutions was never passed on to other team members.  Again, this caused double work.

To prevent scope creep, a simple solution would be to have a design document from the beginning.  The document could have been based off a prototype lesson that addressed any nuances.  Another action the project manager could do is hold short weekly meetings with all team members to ensure they were aware of any changes to the standards.  Plus, during the meeting, the PM could get status reports and feedback on any issues (Laureate Education, n.d.).

I think that in most cases, the right tools and communication can mitigate many project problems.  Scope creep comes in many forms but it is the project manager’s responsibility to keep the project within its original boundaries.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Monitoring projects [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Portny, S. E., Kramer, B. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., & Shafer, S. M. (2007). Project management. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons.