For my look at scope creep this week I would like to use the
project that I discussed a few weeks ago for our look at projects “post mortem.”
The project has been the biggest project yet that I have worked on in my life
and therefore it is my common “go to” when speaking about our own personal
examples. Hence, please excuse me for repeating any information that you may have
already read in the previous post about my project, Scarlet and Gray Ag Day
(SGAD).
The project Scarlet and Gray Ag Day was a project that I was
the chairmen of in college. In general the project consisted of yearlong
planning culminating in one day in which Columbus area elementary school
students attend hands on sessions on the ag campus at OSU to learn all about
agriculture and the agricultural industry. It included committee work, working
with stakeholders like presenters, student workers, elementary school teachers,
financial supporters, organization and a lot of communication.
A little bit into the project I realized that the project
was turning into a lot more than I had expected. The planning committee had
decided to add extra elements into the program such as a lunch complete with a
short speech from the Ohio Director of Agriculture who would be attending and a
workshop for teachers several weeks before the actual SGAD event to teach
students how to incorporate agriculture into their classrooms more. The project
was already a huge undertaking and it suddenly began to grow which provided
more organizational and planning issues. Not as much attention was able to be
given to each task because our committee was spread so thin because of the
creep of the scope.
The SGAD committee and I worked through these issues by
meeting weekly and discussing the tasks that needed attention immediately.
Committees that were only supposed to be worrying about a specific task on the
day of the event were asked to add more to their workload and some were asked
to add tasks related to the teacher workshop which had not originally been on
the scope to their workload. The committee members were all ambitious so it
worked out but having the original scope set up correctly would have provided a
much smoother planning process.
Looking back on the project and what I have learned in the
project management course, I think that I would have done some things
differently in order to provide a smoother planning process. A smooth project
begins with the planning. Setting up the scope, getting your team together to
start the project and assigning specific tasks would have allowed me to see the
picture much more clearly (Greer, 2012). It is one thing to talk about
assignments and tasks and ask committee members to complete them but it would
be another to provide committee members with a visual Gantt chart that they can
refer back to. Setting up a scope statement would have provided me with a clear
outlook of what needed to happen. In this week’s reading there is a checklist
to “Keep the Project Moving” and included is to check back to the scope
documents and address any changes weekly (Greer, 2010). We would do something
like this during the planning process but not officially. By being structured
about it and really addressing these changes may have provided a little less
stress and more organization. “Project managers should approach changes of
scope in a business-like fashion (Greer, 2010).”
The scope changes may not have been a problem if they had
been anticipated previous to the project start and if it had been addressed
correctly.
Greer, M.,
2010. The Project Management Minimalist;
Just Enough PM to Rock your Projects. Laureate University Institutions.
