Week 6 Blog Assignment
Scope Creep in a Website Design
Project
by James Landon
I recently approached our district Director of Curriculum
and Instruction to suggest improvements to the “Curriculum” section of our
district website. Standards and online
resources needed to be re-organized, updated, and presented in a way that
easily accessible for our teachers. She asked me to lead the project to
re-design the site and I graciously accepted.
As I began the project and began analyzing all the
material, I found mountains of information, some updated, some outdated, and some
holes that needed material. Scope creep began here and suddenly exploded. In
addition to simply updating and re-organizing the district standards by subject
area, the project included the addition of Common Core standards and guidelines
for teachers as well as instructional resources in every subject area. It was
here that we found a massive amount of material and the organizational
structure of the site was beginning to get out of control. Unfortunately, I readily
admit, I was the main motivator and I actually pushed to increase the scope
beyond what we had originally planned. I
kept coming up with new ways to organize the material and every time we added a
new section or area of the site, we needed to update the areas we had already
finished to keep the format and organizational structure consistent across the
site.
Looking back, I realize there were several reasons that
scope creep was a problem in this project. First, we did not define the scope at
the beginning of the project, in the SOW, for example. Portny et al. (2008) and
Stolovitch (n.d.a) all explain that scope should be thoroughly defined as part
of the SOW at the beginning of the analysis of the project. By determining the
scope and putting it in writing, we would have had a barrier to block the scope
creep when it manifested itself.
Next, I was driven by the determination to include everything
in this project. Stolovitch (n.d.b)
urges project managers to “avoid the desire to be perfect.” For me, every new resource meant additions on
almost every page. Again, looking back, I should have followed Stolovitch’s
(n.d.a) recommendations to prioritize tasks and be disciplined about the scope.
When it was clear the project was not going to be done
quickly, the project team met and took two major steps to stop the scope creep
and successfully complete the project. First, we set a firm completion date.
This was another step we neglected to do at the beginning of the project. It
was simply something we would complete soon, but no firm completion date. By
setting a firm deadline for completion, our timeline fell into place. Next, we
added more people to the team. Two new people were assigned to help transfer
files, complete formatting and meet with SME’s to be sure all the content was
accurate, updated, and appropriate. These steps allowed us to focus on the
original objectives of the project and complete it quickly and successfully.
Every time we considered new material or a resource that had the potential of
creating scope creep, we quickly looked at the timeline and determined they
would just have to wait.
The project is complete and the results are extremely
positive. Sure, there are a number of things I would add and even more I would
change to improve the site. However, the original objectives of the project were
met and the project was successful because we finally set a timeline, defined
the scope, and focused our work to get the job done.
References:
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.
Stolovitch,
H. (n.d.a). Project kickoff (week 1 resources). [Video]. Laureate.
