Dealing with Scope Creep

Over the years I have been involved in several projects that experienced “scope creep”. One of the largest projects with which I experienced this was originally a project to create an online course for high school and higher education across the state.  

As I had contracted to do several of these in the past, this was nothing new.  However, just as the project scope and deliverables were being completed, the client decided to move the project due to political pressure and a consortium of several states wanting to create the same course.  The states in conjunction with SREB decided to outsource that particular one course project and my role would be only to import into the statewide Moodle LMS and market the course along with our other course offerings (I worked for a state education commission at the time).  

Two weeks after receiving this news, the client came back to ask if I would be willing to take on the rest of their grant deliverables.  The $50,000 course had now turned into a $500,000 project.   As it was a much larger project, the timeline was extended by 6 months and I was able to define what deliverables I would provide to make an impact statewide on the number of students becoming aware of opportunities in post-secondary education.  Again, I was tasked as the project manager for what turned into multiple multimedia deliverables. I would really define this more as scope explosion rather than scope creep through creep did occur after the initial explosion. 

There was some pressure from stakeholders and team members to include activities or deliverables that were not originally envisioned as part of the project as the work ensued.  This was especially a problem with the client who drug their feet when it came to deliverables agreed upon.  They were continually coming asking to add other small projects.  As one project was of high political visibility and included several highly sought advocates for the cause (Dr. Richard W. Riley, former US Secretary of Education and former SC State Governor for one), I did rework some of the deliverables and adjust timelines midstream.  

Throughout the entire process, I had to maintain a strict approval process in order to meet the deliverables within the allotted timeframes and continually fought to get time allotted from the assigned team members’ managers, which had been approved within the initial project development.  However, when it came time to need them, the team members and equipment were continually pulled for “priorities” (non-revenue producing) of other projects.  I continually had to go to the project sponsor, the VP of Education, to get cooperation.  One project which was $50,000, the department manager would not answer emails nor come to meetings.  This was a vital project within the multiple project work this had become.  Due to time constraints and lack of available subject matter personnel as they were all within his department, I was forced to outsource this particular project to an advertising agency.

In the end, I met all the deliverables and the project(s)  assets were beneficial and met the desired outcomes of the project.  I learned a tremendous amount about project management including creating and using a Gantt chart to manage large projects.  This allowed everyone including the client to visually see how delays affected not only one small asset or project  but also the project as a whole.