I vividly remember a
major project in the late 1990’s in which our time and attendance software
needed to update all existing software to handle the year 2000 and beyond. The
legacy software which lots of clients still used had algorithms built into the
code which invalidated the year “00” and the century “20”. As you can
predicate, “Project 2K” initially had a narrow scope, make sure all time and
attendance reports and date references could handle the year 2000. This project was critical since small
companies used the software to prepare payroll and the thought of our software
blowing up on the eve of the year 2000 was unconscionable.
Scope creep reared
its ugly head, as the marketing team began making requests to add in some new
reports with this same release. Dr.
Stolovich states in Project Mangement Concerns,
project that's been spec'd and revise that once its tested and acceptable to add additional
features or to meet another need." (Stolovich, n.d.)
In this scenario, the director of engineering who managed all of the software projects, diplomatically valued the request for the new reports and assured the stakeholders that would be added in the next release. After several passionate meetings, an informal change control system, the C.E.O. of the company determined that at least two reports would be added to this release within the same timeframe. Dr. Stolovitch recommends using a change of scope document in Monitoring Projects to get written confirmation and clarification of the change to the original scope of the project. It clearly lays out what the change is, what the implications are, what the timeline, resources, budget, and deliverables are going to be and going to be effected. You work the change of scope document with the client and get their commitment and signoff and then you communicate the changes, and you reallocate time and resources. (Stolovich, n.d.)
Scope creep always has residual effects. In this case, additional quality assurance personnel had to be added to the project. Some were dedicated to testing the upgrade of all releases of the software on various platforms. The additional Q&A resources were used to test the new reports. Although the timeframe was met, the number of hours expended by human capital and additional resources dedicated to the project halted all other projects until this release was completed.
Profit is always a game changer. Reflecting on this project now, if I were the project manager back then, I would have done a cost variance and estimate at completion. If the C.E.O. were provided with the actual costs of adding these reports to the current release and the difference between what the original scope of the project and the cost of letting another project be shelved to reallocate the Q&A personnel to this project, it might have vetoed the reports in this release. The Earned Value Analysis helps project managers determine whether a project is ahead or behind schedule and whether it’s over or under budget, while only tracking resource expenditures. (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer, 2008, p.327).
References:
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.
Stolovich, H. (Producer). (n.d.) Monitoring Projects. Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Fype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2823017_1%26url%3D
Stolovich,
H. (Producer). (n.d.)Project Management
Concerns: ‘Scope Creep’. Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_1373695_1%26url%3D
