Scope Creep

I was on a project once where my team was hired to format training packets that Military Subject Matter Experts (SME) created.  As time went on, we started noticing that the quality of work coming from the SME’s was going down and they were struggling to write the lesson content, while managing their military commitment.  Being team players, at first under the table, we would help them by developing content to fill in the learning gasp instead of formally returning the packets.  By not returning them we were able to help improving the content of their training packets and then complete our task of formatting the packets for delivery on time.  Soon we found ourselves feeling that we could help them improved all their training packets, falling prey to the phenomenon known as scope creep (Portney, et al, 2008, p 346).  I don’t think this scope change ever became a formal change in writing but informally we were authorized to change our task scope.  We had a little problem with the new time line, we weren’t given as much time are requested and we had to adapt our own process to include the new change control system process that was developed to ensure the SME had a say in the approval of the content before we could finalize the training packets for delivery. 

Looking back I don’t know if things could have been completed differently or if the scope creep was a bad thing.  All members being professional and sharing an invested interest in the training wanted to create the best training possible, in turn causing our own scope creep for ourselves.  The contract ended before our efforts could be judged.  What I think I might have done differently is upfront I would have evaluated the skill set of the team both the ID’s and the SME’s and maybe proposed the scope change to allow ID to create lesson content in writing.  But I know because most project are won based on money and sometime the lowest bid wins even if it’s not the best.  I don’t think anything could formally have been done simply because by the time our team came aboard we were already on the down side of the contract.  Also for us to have a bigger part in the task we would have to be paid out of the PM’s project slush fund (and we were) because working on DOD contracts for the most part there isn’t much negotiating for more money. 

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.

How Long Does It Take

Looking for information to determine how long it takes to design training led me to some very informative sites.  I have included them in my blog this week.

The following links are written by the same person or at least have one author in common both article/blogs were very useful in determining how long will it take to design training.  Even though both state that estimating time associated with cost when designing training isn’t an exacted science, the article, “How long does it take”, did offered some tips.  It used a simple mathematical method by taking an estimate of time used on a previous project’s data; e.g. if “X” took 1 hour then when designing project that include “X” the next time it should be a safe bet that the time would be the same or close to it. 

Kapp, K. (2003) How Long does it take? Estimation Methods for Developing E-Learning. Retrieved from

http://www.astd.org/LC/2003/0703_kapp.htm

 

This article provides some great tips on how to minimize factors that cause projects to become delayed.  I enjoyed reading this article it put things into perspective and provided some factors that can be used to help PM’s remain in control, to help avoid or at least minimize the amount of time wasted.  It stated that some of the reasons for why projects experience some form of delay, doesn’t necessary have to do with the project itself but in fact it’s the client and SME.  The article ends with useful tip on how to minimize this by having the PM take an active role in the issue.

Defelice, R. & Kapp, K. (2009). Time to develop one hour of training. Retrieved from

http://www.astd.org/LC/2009/0809_kapp.htm

This blogs article provides a very informative, detailed process to determine the time/cost of a web project utilizing the top-down process.  It walks you through the five main phase, “define activities, define task, define human resources, and assign human resources to tasks and estimate times and cost.”  In the end offered a simple formula to use to calculate the cost.

Lupetti, A. (2009). Simple process to estimate times and costs in a web project. Retrieved from

http://woork.blogspot.com/2009/02/simple-process-to-estimate-time-and.html

I hope you enjoy these article and find them useful.