Addressing Issues and Risk to Avoid Scope Creep

Planning a project takes a lot of time, patience and skills.  When a team is collaborating to accomplish an instructional design project the project leader must communicate to the team, provide resources to get the work accomplish, create a statement of work, discuss budget constraints, assure the team knows their roles and responsibilities, and stay on a timeline all constantly measured by a project scope.  It can be a time consuming task to make sure all procedures are implemented.   If a project is well defined and all rubrics to the project are done, what can go wrong?  What causes scope creep in a project?

I remember when I had to lead a project for an instructional design module.  My team and I had to train learners about the use of technology in the classroom.  We each had our roles and responsibilities to fulfill in the project.  The ADDIE module (Clark, 2011) was used to develop an instructional plan and an online evaluation piece.  Each team member was in charge of one module of the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation, in order to make the process go according to guidelines.  During the first progress meeting one of the project members was behind in the task, and another member did not completely understand the process.  During the second progress meeting, I had to change the project scope and rearrange task and responsibilities.  Later on during the development, all of the resources had to pull together and make sure each part of the plan was completed, before the extended deadline was up.  “Project managers can design monitoring and controlling systems specifically targeted for schedule performance, work-effort, and expenditures.  Monitoring and managing scope creep and project change are two overarching control responsibilities” (Kramer, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Portny, 2008, p. 317).  If issues and risk associated with the project are handled and/or analyzed in a timely manner than revisions must be made to insure the project development.

How could this scope creep been avoided?  I think I should have communicated the objectives more clearly and as a team, we should have collaborated on each other’s strength and weaknesses.  In addition, we should have known to discuss any issues ahead of time.  As a project leader, I should have made it clear to the team that if any of us did not think our part of the plan would be completed on time for the first review and evaluation phase, then we should communicate that to a team member to insure all areas of the development and design phase would get completed.  Communication, collaboration, effort, dedication, and experienced all were factors that contributed to the development of scope creep. 

In order to avoid scope creep the project leader must prepare status reports, communicate to the team make task, focus on the timeline, budget, and client satisfaction (Stolovitch).  Issues should be addressed early in the process so revisions can be made in a timely process.  A project manager’s job in a development of a project plan can be tedious, but if the support team collaborate and stick to the project scheduling then the process can go according to schedule.

References

Clark, D. (2011, September 25). Big dog & little dog's performance juxtaposition: Addie model. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/history_isd/addie.html

Kramer, B. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Portny, S. E. (2008).Project management planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. (pp. 317-347). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Stolovitch, H. D. (Performer) (n.d.). Monitoring projects[Web]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/blackboard/execute/launcher?type=Course&id=_1373694_1&url=