As I gather my thoughts, contemplating the day’s snowfall and shoveling, I consider a previous project I once worked on. One I remember too well, and, to this day I am unsure has finally been completed.
Consider management requesting to have the course you are an instructor for be “upgrade” to the next level of instruction.
There were two, I feel, dominate scope creep issues that impacted this project. First, a delay in the ability to interact with stakeholders--those outside the organization; this sounds askewed, but true. As a team, we discussed what we could do, researched as able, to fulfill the requirement with what we felt we were able with our hands tied; even my inexperienced in project management told me this was wrong and caused undue delay and stress on the team.
Without going into detail, as a team, we did our best to move past this restriction, finally, returning to management, explaining what we were able to find, but insisted the need to converse with the stakeholders. I learn in project management the importance of stakeholders, which inturn makes me wonder if other issues dictated the initial directive. Lesson Learned: When embarking on a project, ensure the pending project has the appropriate backing/direction. Once cleared to proceed, ensure everyone, including stakeholders, are part of the ENTIRE project.
Secondly, no real projected completion date, which also meant no project schedule. We looked at the next meeting--established from the last meeting, but nothing further down the road. The magnitude of this project needed a schedule to illuminate all possible risks to the project completion date. This included the instructor’s course schedule--courses continued through this process with adjustments to each subsequent iteration, and to officially establish a completion date.
Managing issues is very important for the success for any project, including identifying, documenting, and communicating issues to those involved (Lynch & Roceker, 2007).
Bottomline, if you have a project, no matter the size or importance, you need to establish a schedule and utilize all stakeholders.
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Reference
Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge
