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.
Angela, in taking a look at the frustrations you experienced with the yearbook, you've essentially created a post-mortem which will be an invaluable tool when you do this project again next year. Of the possible actions you proposed, two that I think will help a lot are these:
ReplyDeleteTake what you wrote here (minus the comments about your boss' communication skills :) ), and share them with your boss now, while the issues are still fresh. See if he will agree to dedicate a percentage of this year's take to act as next year's start-up.
As for the kids not handing in their work on time, I would agree with you that more kids on this project will help (adding more resources). You might wish to include collaboration and competition into the mix, so that students know that the teams or individuals who meet their deadlines have a greater chance of being published. Let more than one team submit for various assignments, so you'll have some options in terms of quality and timeliness.
One final resource to add: Is there a parent or colleague who can share the load? Next year on Thanksgiving, we want all of your focus to be on the sweet potatos!
Scope Creep is one of the big profit and motivation killers we all tackle every day (Burke, 2010). Avoiding scope creep is not possible. However, monitoring it, controlling it and thereby reducing some of the pain is possible (Portney et, al 2011). I think one of the ways of managing time in this yearbook project is to have students work collaboratively because it helps decreases the labor associated with the project. It further exposes students to the knowledge and experiences of the collaborators. In addition, it helps accommodate different learning styles.
ReplyDeleteReferences
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.
Burke, M. (2010). 10 Ways to Tackle the Scope Creep. Sitepoint . Retrieved on April 8, 2011 from http://blogs.sitepoint.com/10-ways-tackle-the-scope-creep/