Oh no, it's Scope Creep!

Describe a project, either personal or professional, that experienced issues related to scope creep. What specific scope creep issues occurred? How did you or other stakeholders deal with those issues at the time? Looking back on the experience now, had you been in the position of managing the project, what could you have done to better manage these issues and control the scope of the project?


Since I am just a lowly public school teacher, I've not experienced project management in a business sense. What I have done has been related specifically to education. I've used this example before, but the one that sticks out in my mind is my role as brand-new Yearbook advisor this year. What I thought was going to be a structured project turned out to be an experiment in patience. I was working with 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and trying to produce a yearbook using an online program. The biggest factor for scope creep for me this year was time. We would be approaching each of our 4 deadlines, and even though my students had received several warnings and reminders to finish their pages, the majority of the students were not finished. We had to exceed our deadline by several days, and our 1st deadline found me finishing the pages myself on Thanksgiving break. 


No matter how many times I changed my strategy for motivating them, there were still a few students who pushed us past the deadline. "Monitoring the schedule on a regular basis will allow corrections to be applied if the development is exceeding the plan. Corrective actions that might be applied are: add additional resources to an activity, start independent activities earlier, decrease the scope of the project" (Lynch, 2007). If I could have applied some of these strategies, it might have improved the outcome. Maybe recruiting more students would have taken some of the pressure off the existing staff and improved the time requirements.


The second problem with scope creep for this project was budget. I had some major issues with the account because I had to pay a deposit for the work-in-progress but hadn't sold enough yearbooks to cover it. Normally this wouldn't be an issue because the yearbooks always sell at the end of the year and cover all the costs. This year the principal decided that accounts wouldn't go negative, and I had to do extra fundraising to try and cover the deficiency. What would have helped would have been to have better communication with my administrator from the beginning. He's not a great communicator, so knowing that I should have gone above and beyond to ensure that everything was laid out on the table before the money was spent. "Project managers can improve their communications by explaining in detail the nature of a risk, how it would impact the project, and basis on which the project manager estimated its likelihood of occurrence" (Portney, 2008). If I had sat down with him and talked about the risks, then the scope creep would have been decreased.


Since I was the project manager for this project, most of the scope creep issues were in my control. I needed to be more proactive from the beginning and should have implemented ways to improve my time issues with my students. I also should have used better methods of planning and communication to ensure that I wouldn't have issues with money. I have learned a great deal from this experience and know that I will apply all that knowledge plus the tools I have gained in this course to ensure that next year won't include any of the same scope creep.

Angela

Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and    

     management. London: Routledge. Copyright by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Reprinted by permission of   

     Taylor & Francis Group, LLC via the Copyright Clearance Center. 

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.

Helpful Links to ID Planning Success!

Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design

I found this website to be extremely helpful because it did a good job of breaking down each aspect of the planning process for instructional design. It gives a breakdown of the different time and money allocations for an ID project. The author walks you step-by-step through the different elements that go into instructional time, planning time, development time, etc. The final element on this website is a link to an "Excel Spreadsheet Cost Estimator" which the designer can use to apply his/her own project details to a blank spreadsheet. There are also links to other resources and learning activities that would be helpful for a first time instructional designer.

Michael Greer's PM Resources

This is the website of the slightly famous (in our course at least) Michael Greer whose captivating works we read each week in class. I certainly couldn't pass on the opportunity to use his website as an example for this assignment. ;-) He starts out by explaining the different "rules of thumb" related to instructional design and estimating costs. His advice is helpful, especially to those of us who have never done this before. For example, he states that "what matters most when estimating the development time is the instructional development project management model you will be using." This was surprising to me because I didn't think that the model determined time. It seemed to me that the model was just an organizational structure but not something that would influence the time allocation on a project. The website also includes links to other PM resources that can be accessed for assistance on all aspects of the project. Of course, if you like the website he offers you plenty of assistance for purchasing his materials.