Describe a project,
either personal or professional, that experienced issues related to scope
creep.
At
my school, all faculty and staff must serve on one major task force. Within
each task force, there are several activities or events that each task force
are responsible for completing throughout the school year. I am a member of the
curriculum and assessment task force which has many events we must do and some
of them are done more than once in the school year. As a committee, we divided
all of the events amongst all members into small committees within our task
force. I was chosen to lead two of the committee, 25
Book Campaign Celebration and Science Fair. On each of the committees there are
about three or four people working together as a team. Also, we have curriculum
nights where students led activities in a particular content area.
Unfortunately, I was in charge of putting on a Science Night because I am over
the Science Fair committee. I was not
informed about the Science Night until one week before the actual date. I had
only one week to plan and inform parents and the community to get them involved
in this event.
What specific scope creep issues occurred?
Even though, I am lead person on the Science
Fair committee, I was not informed of all duties that needed to be completed.
The timeline to have all material and individual grade level projects material ready
for teachers done was almost not possible.
Another issue is that there wasn’t an enough time to inform parents,
community, students, and teachers about the afterschool events that was taken
place.
How did you or other
stakeholders deal with those issues at the time?
In
order to try to have a great turn out of parents and students, we immediately
sent out flyers that went home that same day I was told about the event. It was
not the time to play the blame game, the
committee and myself met and that evening
afterschool to discuss what needed to be done and I delegated specific
task to individual members. We continue to communicate about the event progress
in person and through email. Also, every morning during the announcement, I had
a message about the Science Night announce as well as in the afternoon announcement.
I contacted Science department of my district that also helped by providing Science
kits for each grade level. We had incentives for students who came to
participate as well as each teacher had goodies for each child and parents who participate
in their individual activity.
Looking back on the
experience now, had you been in the position of managing the project, what
could you have done to better manage these issues and control the scope of the
project?
All
changes that need to be made would have a change control system that can be
well controlled. All of the important information and components that need to
be done will be completed in advance.
Also, all of the changes will have to be communicated to all members. Teachers
will be notified in enough time for them to be prepared to stay late and have
all material ready and available for activity. Parents will know in enough time
to get off from work, so they may be able to attend the event. Lastly, I would
try to make sure the changes are implemented smoothly and properly as
possible. There will be constant monitoring
and controlling of different parts of the project to make sure it is a success.
