Looking Back at Past Project Issues and Scope
Creep
Scope Creep is that ever present metamorphosis of growth that encroaches on projects and which, if not controlled, has the ability to exponentially delay milestones and deadlines, increase budgets, and affect timelines. Well-meaning clients, project team members, and other stakeholders can knowingly or unknowingly contribute to scope creep as numerous suggestions are made which, they believe, will “improve the project’s resulting output” (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008, p. 346). Contributions to scope creep can also come from outside of projects.
I
am a former president of a local high school athletic booster club (not where I
work). The athletic booster club supports all athletics in the school building
by among other things running the concession stands during games, supplementing
equipment purchases and awarding scholarships. All of these issues will not be
discussed in this forum. The president serves for two years and when I took
over the student activities coordinator assured
me that I would not have to “do that much.”
We
began our work with an initial meeting in July of 2011 when our board elected
officers and filled committee positions including vice president, secretary and
treasurer. As the school year began things ran fairly smoothly. A key component
of the booster club is parent volunteers and the club took advantage of
opportunities to recruit additional members through parent nights, individual
athletic meetings and other after-school activities. This process is not very
complicated and required positioning booster club members in strategic
locations and setting up tables in the foyer to receive parents. As the school
year and my tenure as president progressed, my duties became a little more
demanding with preparations for monthly meetings, conducting those meetings, maintaining
the membership list and being mindful of upcoming school and booster club events
taking precedence. In Practitioner
Voices: Resource Challenges, Troy Achong (Laureate Education (Producer).
(n.d.) discusses the issue of aligning calendars, (even if it is your own) and
the vast amounts of time that activity alone can consume.
Scope
creep first arrived in the form of my having to designate someone else to take
notes of our meetings because our secretary often did not show up. Project
managers report that “coping with change is at the top of their list of
important problems” (Portny, et al), and one or two times I had to conduct the
meeting, take meeting notes at the same time, and then get those notes out to
our general membership.
One
of the athletic booster club’s most important positions is that of concessions
chair. The person in charge of concessions has to pick up items from our
participating merchants, keep track of the merchandise, make sure that the
concessions stands are well stocked for football and basketball games and run
the stand during games. “Avoiding scope creep is not possible, however
installing a change control system allows a project manager to monitor, control
and reduce distress” (Portny, et al, p.346-347). Our concessions chair was
great at managing the merchandise in concessions, but was unfortunately, was
gruff and could be abrasive to members even as they volunteered at games. I
remember a particular evening when the chair and a booster member got into
argument over the way she was speaking to him and I had to separate them. The
chair called me later and it was clear that she thought the member was wrong. I
told her diplomatically, that the argument should never have occurred,
especially in the concessions stand in front of patrons, and that both of them
were wrong.
Balancing
my volunteer calendar (I am also an active volunteer in my college alumni
association) with my work calendar took some effort but I kept that balance by building
in time for it after school and on weekends. The note-taking issue was an
adjustment that had to be dealt with regularly throughout my tenure as
president and one of the executive members always volunteered to take meeting
notes. We kept communication open with the general membership by emailing
meeting notes to them. “Savvy project managers develop comprehensive monitoring
systems” (Portny, et al, p.346), which would have helped here. The general
issue with the concessions chair was by far the most strenuous of my two-year
term. The other members shared the same concern before my arrival and while I
was president but no one else wanted to handle concessions so were in a grin
and bear it situation. My term as athletic booster club president ended in June
2013 and due to my work schedule and my Walden University obligations I did not
have adequate time to volunteer during the 2013-2014 school year. However, I understand
that some of the same problems existed this past year and the athletic booster
executive board has made some changes resulting in the concessions chair
stepping down.
Looking
back, the techniques learned in this course, specifically, instituting a change
control system, would have allowed me to do a better job of anticipating these
issues and identifying their impact on the membership body (Portny, et al). I
did take time to speak to some members directly about their concerns however I
did not document these conversations. A change control system may have possibly
yielded the following benefits: “install a process for accepting changes, communicate
those changes to all concerned parties, and require that changes be approved in
writing by the membership (Portny, et al).
References
Laureate
Education (Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Resource challenges [Video
file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu
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.
