Scope Creep is defined as the attempted improvement of a product in the middle of a project (Portny, et. al, 2007). While it is admirable when people are working towards a similar goal and want to make it the best that they possibly can there could be unintended problems such as no one knows what is happening or the project becomes too big to manage.
In my professional life, I am now the offensive coordinator of a high school football team. Four years ago, I was just the offensive line coach and another coordinator was at the head of the offense. It became obvious that we needed a shake up in what we do, and we needed to install a new offense. The five offensive coaches went away together for the weekend and literally locked ourselves into a hotel conference room and tried to install a new offense. The first day we got a ton of work done. We drew up different formations, looked at personnel packages and schemed about different plays that we could run. The second day however, the current coordinator and another coach got off on a tangent of the ability to run one play by blocking a different zone. In theory, if this were to work it would be amazing, but the bottom line is that we are a high school football team, not an NFL team, and there is no way that our players could perform this kind of task. However, since our project leader was DEAD SET that we could pull it off, we spent four hours drawing things out and trying to talk through what ONE PLAY would look like. I left the weekend feeling discouraged and not listened to at all. It was a terrible feeling and one that could have been avoided if we had stayed with the project goals.
If I had been the project manager, which I am now, I would have done a couple of things very differently. First of all, I would not have allowed myself or my staff to deviate from the task at hand. I would have constantly referred back to the objective of the meeting and redirected based on the objective, as I needed to. Most importantly, I would not have allowed myself or others to lead the group so far off task that it was not possible to get back on. As the coordinator I need to lead by example and make sure that the group stays focused on the task at hand.
Reference:
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Gene,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your example of scope creep. As a figure skating coach, I have been in the same type of meetings."Nothing can cause disillusionment and frustration faster than bringing motivated people together and giving them no guidance about how to work with each other"(Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008, p. 303). I feel that the coordinator needed some lessons in project management so that he would have recognized his responsibility to the team. Here are the identified risks that I found related to your example.
1.Team Members were not given a written task schedule.
2.Team members did not stay focused on the learning objectives.
3.Project strategy was an untested approach that was too difficult for the learners.
I think that you have provided great ideas for managing this team situation. What happened to the players when they had to attempt the play that was too difficult? Did the coordinator evaluate the play afterwards?
Thank you for the great post and I enjoyed seeing the lessons of project management at work in sports.
Deveise
Reference:
Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., & Sutton, M. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Your post illustrates why it is necessary to follow the plan or initial idea laid out for a project. Scope creep seems to have a way of changing plans and really makes anxiety more prevalent in everyone on the team. I am sure if everyone would have stuck to the original plan the offensive staff would have created an offense that would be effective. It is important that tasks be given priority as over others,everyone provides input, and the team remains focused on the task at hand.
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