When I think about the project I have worked in my professional life I can think of multiple projects that have had scope creep; which is where the scope of the project exceeds the original defined scope.
The first project was a video production project that started out at an informal side project that I was doing for fun when I was supporting another work related project. I was support a system conversion project, and also video taping the associates feedback on change management. Although the project started out as an informal side project it, quickly became a high priority and the interviews became part of a company-wide presentation. This projects was scope creep was because a clearly defined scope wasn’t project was never identified. That defiantly taught me the value of having the project scope outlined and verified from the start of any project.
Another project where I have encountered a scope creep like situation is related to a project that was for building a virtual training environment. The scope of the project was defined out, the player that were related to the different areas were talk. The project was very well planned, we had business analyst assess the value of the project, we had sign off from half of the companies’ upper management. Now, if we fast forward 6-8 months to the system be done from a IS/IT building standpoint and handed over to the training department, this is where the issue started. Some of us were expecting a “turn key” system and other expect to have to do some work to make the new tool what we want!
The issue is that we couldn’t have the IS/IT department defining simulated training scenarios. It came down to the training department analyzing the core data and making adjustments to the data to design our go forward system.
So this project didn’t have a traditional scope creep, it had a miscommunication scope creep. In the end this situation came down to make sure every party understood why it was important for us to define our own scenario from the data.
It all comes down to communication!
Thanks,
Rob
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