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Scope Creep and Holiday Gift Drives: One Project Manager’s Experience

Scope creep is an inevitable component in any project; it is also what project managers report to be the most problematic aspect of managing projects. According to Portny et al., (2008) scope creep occurs because as the project progresses, new technologies, materials, or requirements make themselves known to the project manager. In addition, there is a “natural tendency of the client, as well as project team members, to try to improve the project’s output as the project progresses” (Portny et al., 2008, p. 346). Greer states that scope creep is not necessarily a bad thing, and on the contrary, “scope changes can be beneficial when they allow the project team to respond sensibly to changing conditions that exist outside the project. This can help ensure that project deliverables remain relevant” (2010, p. 35). With this said, it could be that project managers need to change their mentality to welcome, instead of avoid, some level of scope creep in order to ensure that the project delivers the quality result that is desired.

There are a few ways to approach scope creep, and some will be more effective than others. The first way to approach scope creep is to advise those making the request that changes simply cannot be accommodated; the PM can point to the signed statement-of-work and other project documents to confirm with the client and stakeholder that the original commission does not include these requirements. Likely, this approach will not work—the client and stakeholder may insist that the new requirements be accommodated. Instead, the PM can work with the stakeholder that has made the change request to ensure that the change is really imperative to include and not just a “wish list’ item. The stakeholder has to be aware of the potential repercussions of the change. After this step has been completed, the PM needs to conduct a formal review process to capture the change request and ensure that the client agrees to any adjustments to timing and additional costs. There needs to be a formal sign-off by the client that the change should be made so that it is documented that they understand the changes.

A project that I have worked on in the past that included scope creep was during a holiday gift drive that my organization sponsored. This project involved identifying a family that employees would provide clothing, toys, food, and other items for. The project originally got off to a good start, however what had changed from previous years is that the organization chose one family to donate gifts to as opposed to multiple families. This had the effect of creating a stronger emotional connection to that family. As the project progressed, some of the project team members began to ask if the organization could do more than just donating to the family once per year. Their argument was that the family had on-going needs that the organization had the capacity to address throughout the year. These team members proposed changing the scope of the project to include on-going financial support for the family, such as volunteering to pay the family’s utility bill, provide grocery store gift cards, and gas cards.

As the unofficial project manager for the holiday gift drive, I had many concerns about the feasibility of this change request. Through a number of emails and meetings with the project team, I was able to convince the team that this particular request could be separated from the holiday drive so that we did not risk the success of the entire project as we waited to get buy-in from other stakeholders on the efficacy of the new idea. In addition, I was able to map out the concerns with the change request, including how to ensure that there would be sustained attention from employees throughout the year. The risk to the donor family was that they may begin to rely heavily on my organization’s support and not be adequately prepared if support began to wane. There were also ethical issues regarding my own organization’s sponsorship of a family when there are many organizations, such as United Way, who support programs for families in need as part of their mission. Skirting an effective organization to begin providing our own “services” to families in need on a sustained basis would place my organization as a service provider—just an unreliable one—which was not part of our mission statement or core competency. Given the organization’s previous commitments to social change projects, I was not convinced that employees could sustain their attention and interest on such an endeavor—especially when employees already had pressing demands on their time and resources. Ultimately, a contingent of the group did pursue providing additional support to the family after the initial holiday drive was executed successfully. They led that particular project themselves for a period of time before it was disbanded.

Looking back, there are certain aspects of this project that I would have handled differently. In my previous blog post, I discuss the need to manage all projects, big or small, in a more formal fashion and I would have adopted that approach with this particular project as well. Secondly, I would have put together a formal document that outlined the scope of the change request for the project team to review and obtain their buy-in on. This would have allowed the other stakeholders to recognize that I took the request seriously and wasn’t discounting it just because I found the idea flawed. In addition, Greer (2010) states that project managers need to handle change requests rationally as opposed to emotionally; the project may end up being more complex, cost more, and take more time, but as change requests are inevitable, they should never be surprising or alarming. By handling changes calmly and systematically, a project manager will more likely be able to overcome the changes and ensure that the project stays on track. I would say that I was a bit panicked at the time regarding this change request—it was not something that I had bargained for when I had agreed to lead the project and I was not adequately prepared. Lastly, although I was acting as an informal project manager for the holiday drive, I was not committed to continuing to project manage on an on-going basis. However, I could have provided basic project management training and advice to the lead of the next phase of the project to better ensure the success of her project. My own learnings managing the organization’s holiday drives could have helped her to avoid mistakes that I had made in the past.

In more formal organizational projects, there are other approaches that can help to ensure that scope creep does not impact the overall success of the project. These include (Greer, 2010, Portny et al., 2008):

1. Creating a change control board to manage change requests and determine if the change should move forward
2. Communicate to all stakeholders and clients the nature of the change; obtain signatures on a change request form by the client and other key stakeholders to ensure there is proper buy-in.
3. Ensure that changes are accounted for in project documents, including the project plan, and are properly budgeted for.
4. Once buy-in is established, ensure that the change will be executed upon effectively (proper resources assigned, etc).

Scope creep happens—a project manager is ready for that eventuality and creates a tool kit in advance in order to prepare for it. By proactively managing change requests, and altering one’s mindset about change as a potentially positive force instead of always a negative one, a project manager can better ensure their projects launch successfully.

References:

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

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.