Scope creep. Two words that we don’t want to deal with and
yet we face every day in the midst of a project. What starts as a solid plan
may get waylaid by seemingly good intentions that carry the finish line further
and further away and which may have rippling effects on stakeholders and end
users alike.
Fortunately, I’ve not dealt with a great deal of scope creep
within the projects I’ve worked on or been a part of as a team member. I can
say that one thing we focus on heavily within my company is ensuring deadlines
and deliverable dates are feasible and realistic. The theme seems to be that if
we think it can be done in 5 days, it’s better to say 7-8 and deliver early
than deal with the aftermath of delivering late. Better to under promise and over
deliver than overpromise and under deliver.
However, one project that I worked on experienced scope
creep on a significant scale. We were set to deliver a project within about a
two month time frame. Plans were created, SMEs consulted, budgets created, and
work was underway. Somewhere in the midst of the project it was discovered that
a large chunk of material was unaccounted for. This wasn’t internal material-it
was an external resource and quite costly to obtain. Budgets were reworked and
recalculated, but there was going to be significant increases to ensure this
component would be available. In addition, the missing piece would also take an
additional six weeks to obtain. You can only imagine the team’s horror at
discovering that this was overlooked-but from an ordering standpoint of now
needing an additional 6 weeks, but also in cost. To make matters worse, the
missing piece had to be in place before making any additional progress on the
other components.
To fast forward to the end of the story, the missing piece
did take all of the full six weeks to be delivered, the project was over time
budget now by seven weeks due to the delays. In addition, several thousand
dollars were added to the budget. Stakeholders, especially those holding the
purse strings, were not happy. End users were not happy as the wait impacted
the results they were looking to achieve in the short term which then in turn
impacted the long term. The members of the team were placed on hold for the six
weeks and then needed to move frantically, working long hours at great cost to
complete the project.
Looking back, this was a simple error. It was simply an
oversight of the needed or missing component. Were it not a critical piece to
the remainder of the project it wouldn’t have been a big deal in the long run.
However, since it was a linchpin component, it meant that production was
stopped and budgets inflated. It did teach me an incredibly valuable lesson.
Account for all pieces. If you think you have them all, if you think you have
all of the pieces to the puzzle-ask someone else to count them. Ensure you have
a second and even third pair of eyes on the project before beginning, before
promising, and certainly before delivering.
