Be it a large or small- IT project; we tend to assume that it is going to face some delays resulting in time and cost overruns, don’t we? It is bound to happen if we start with the premise that something undesirable will happen and we even try to justify it, right!
If we dig deeper and try to understand the underlying causes behind these delays and overruns, we usually find that a lack of planning, shifting project requirements, unaligned project team and slack project execution stand out as the key contributors to project time and cost overruns.
You must be wondering that the heading of the blog talks about Scope Creep and I am talking about time and cost overruns and not about scope creep. Well, the first two contributors towards the time and cost overruns that I listed in the previous paragraph are in other words called the Scope Creep.
What is scope creep in project management?
Every project has a defined scope in terms of the project specifications, budget and delivery deadlines. The project manager is responsible for delivering the project output as per the predefined scope and schedule with a budgeted cost. Ideally, this project scope needs to be defined, discussed and frozen before the project start. But nothing in life can be that ideal, and some changes in the project requirements are usually okay.
But when these changes and revisions become frequent, and it leads to a disruption in the entire project schedule, costs, and delivery deadlines, it is called the scope creep. When the initially agreed volume and the depth of work change over a short period, it is called scope creep.
Why is scope creep bad for the on-time project delivery?
On-time project delivery is a function of 5 critical success factors
- Involvement of the key stakeholders at the right time
- Meticulous planning and scheduling of tasks with realistic buffers
- Optimum resource alignment with the project execution skills mapping
- A responsive feedback mechanism and collaborative work culture
- An efficient testing and issue resolution process
Scope creep disrupts all of the critical success factors required to ensure on-time project delivery. It creates an atmosphere of chaos in the project environment and within the project team.
Frequent changes in the project requirement might lead to a lot of rework and rework and demotivate the project team members. A demotivated project team can not give their 100% to the project deliverables, which leads to an increase in defects and further rework.
Scope creep makes all the stakeholders involved in the project, right from the project promoter to the project manager to the project team members, dissatisfied. Scope creep eventually will lead to time as well as cost overrun.
Why does it happen? Who is responsible for scope creep?
This is a very tricky question! Can we pinpoint the responsibility of scope creep on anyone stakeholder? I doubt that. I think it is a two-way street.
Both the project sponsor and the SPOC (single point of contact between the developer and the customer) are expected to finalize and communicate the detailed scope to the project manager.
The project manager then can carry out efficient project management activities to deliver projects as per the original schedule and with an accepted level of schedule variance.
Here are 5 Tips to manage scope creep in project management?
It would be next to impossible to avoid some revisions and rework during most of the project lifecycle journey, but here are 5 tips to avoid any significant changes, aka scope creep…
1. Invest considerable thought during the project conceptualization stage. Guide your customer on the technology tools they can consider for the project to improve the project output. Let the project scope definition and planning phase be mutually beneficial
2. Document the final project scope and delivery timelines and get a formal buy-in or approval from the project sponsor
3. Create a project plan (if you are using the waterfall project management approach) or a User Story (if you prefer an Agile Scrum approach to project management), but leave some room (buffer) to accommodate obvious changes from your customer. Rigid project plans rarely work!
4. Set up a process for managing any scope changes once the project has started and encourage the customer to route all the change requests and feedback through a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) to improve clarity and responsibility
5. Facilitate project execution and monitoring with the help of real-time project management Dashboards, which help in highlighting any scope creep or operational risk signals and take corrective actions.
Project scope creep, which results in more than one-third of the IT projects going off track, can not be avoided entirely but can be controlled if you follow the 5 simple tips in your day-to-day project environment.
