Scope Creep

In a professional context, I have become skilled at handling scope creep through using a change control process much like the one described by Portny et al (2008).  This process involves reviewing changes, identifying, outlining and communicating impacts and then using a change of scope document if necessary to increase time and budget accordingly.

If my Mother had done a little more saying "No",
I wouldn't have ended up with this stupid bow on my head...

Where I regularly fall short in managing scope creep is with personal projects.  There, I fall into the trap that Vince Budrovich (n.d.) talks about of not wanting to say no.  A prime example of this would be my daughter's first Christmas (seven years ago).  I wanted both sides of our family to be there and share this event with our daughter.  Sounds simple enough right...?  I grossly underestimated the initial scope of this project and accepted every scope change that came along without question - all because I didn't want to upset anyone.  What went originally from being one dinner, turned into a Christmas Eve buffet, a Christmas Morning Brunch, Christmas Dinner and Boxing Day Breakfast (all done around the feeding schedule of a 4 month old infant).  Two very (understatement) families participated, with very different traditions and expectations and I tried to accommodate all of them.  The scope was not managed well, and I paid the price for it through budget overruns, schedule crunches and unmet expectations.  While there may have been some temporary discomfort at saying "no", it is unlikely that it would have been worse than the exhaustion and upset caused by doing too much in too short of a time frame.  We have reduced the scope of Christmas since, and now I actually get to see my children open their gifts.  There are some members of the family who do not attend Christmas at our house because we do not meet their expectations now - but that is their problem and we have chosen not to make it ours.

A powerful no is one of the most important tools that a Project Manager has when it comes to dealing with scope creep.  Our second most powerful tool is a change control process.  However, if the project is not clearly defined up front (as was the case with our daughter's first Christmas), the Project Manager can expect a lot of sleepless nights, extra work and a budget that spirals out of control.

References:

Budrovich, V. (n.d.) “Practitioner Voices: Strategies for Working with Stakeholders” [Video].

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.

Communicating Effectively

According to Dr. Stolovitch (n.d.), 93% of communication comes from elements outside of the actual content.  We also need to consider the organizational culture and individual when looking at what the best mode of communication is to use in different situations.  This week, we have been tasked with looking at the same content presented three different ways: email, voicemail and face-to-face.  Our task is to see what (if anything) changed in our interpretation of the message from one modality to the next. 

My own listening:
I am aware that I come from a formal background, and have my own internal hierarchy of urgency based on my own preferences.  Email, within my own framework is the the most formal, and will be the first priority regardless of the content, voicemail is second and tasks presented from face-to-face communication will be the lowest priority.  Said another way, if you want something done by me quickly - send me an email.  I also appreciate clarity (as do most stakeholders) and minimal extraneous information in a message as it assists me in sorting through what is important.  Dr. Stolovitch (n.d.) advised clearly stating the purpose of a communication up front which supports this type of communication.

Reaction to email:
As I read through the email, my interpretation was that it was:

• Gentle
• Urgent
• Understanding of constraints

I suspect that that this was not the first communication on the issue (as the issue was urgent, and there was significant pre-amble around understanding being busy etc.).  I would have responded to this communication right away by email,

Reaction to voicemail:
As I listened to the voicemail, the tone of the message came across as much more urgent than it did through the email and less gentle.  The urgency of the need came through, and I would have responded first with a return of the phone call, and second with fulfillment of the request via email.

Reaction to face-to-face:
I found the face-to-face communication to be almost confusing after the first two modes.  Jane was smiling and trying to be pleasant and almost seemed relaxed as she hung over the cubicle wall.  If I received the message in this manner, I could potentially ignore it.  The delivery did not seem to match my initial interpretation of the content at all and was very informal (Portny, Mantle, Meredith, Shafer & Sutton, 2008).  Given the significant impacts of the request, I am surprised that such an informal method was used, and would hope that Jane decided to follow up on that face-to-face conversation in a written format as well.

Lessons learned:
After experiencing this communication through three different modalities, I'm very aware of the downfalls and confusion that can be caused through face-to-face communication.  The 93% of the communication that came through outside of the content in this modality for me was confusing and seemed to blur the urgency and importance of the issue at hand.  Written communication, with a clearly stated purpose and limited extraneous information continue to occur to me as the best primary mode for communication.

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.) Communicating with Stakeholders, [Video].

Learning from a Project Post Mortem

I decided to use one of the largest "personal" projects that I have taken on to examine under the lens of a project post mortem this week - the renovation/restoration of our house.

Having a plan in place that considers scope, budget and time-line


Our House - Before.

My husband and I purchased a century home in 2003, with the goal of renovating and restoring it over five years (as means allowed), and then selling it to buy the home we figured we would raise our family in.  We identified what we wanted to do (scope), estimated what we wanted to spend (budget) and decided that we would do this work over the course of five years (time-line).  I even created a beautiful Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in MS Project for the first phase of the work on the house.

Expect the unexpected

The only original item that we managed to stick to was the time-line.  A few months into the project, we discovered that we were expecting our first child. With that discovery, the overall needs and plan of the project radically altered - as did the resources (both from a human resources and financial resources perspective).  As I read through Greer's (2010) post mortem questions related to Needs and Feasibility, around missing needs up front - I confess, I had a bit of a chuckle.  I'm rather uptight about identifying needs early on in a project (because un-identified needs that come up later on, come with a cost), and have limited tolerance for PMs who don't identify all potential needs in the beginning.  Looking at my house project though, gives me a different perspective.  Things do change (constantly).  As such, we do need to build in contingencies to deal with when needs do change, and be willing and able to shift when required.  In the case of our house, originally we planned to have a master bedroom, a spare bedroom, a music room and two offices.  In the end, our house ended up with three bedrooms and two offices.  We thought originally that we could manage with the one bathroom that the house had.  As we started having children though, and realized that "this" was going to be the house that we would be raising our children in, we added another bathroom into the plan.

Celebrate the successes


Our House - After.

Greer's first question on the post mortem list is "Are you proud of the finished deliverables?"  Absolutely we are.  The entire project took a tremendous amount of work, resources and time - but we are very happy with the finished results.  We invested more into the project than we originally planned to given that we planned to live in the house longer, and needed it to support being our home and work environments.  Each time we were faced with "scope creep", we carefully looked at the impact to time and budget and made our decisions accordingly.  The year that we finished the exterior work, one of our neighbors entered us into our property into local "Communities in Bloom" competition.  Much to our surprise, against very stiff competition - we won 1st place in the Residential Category.  That was a very gratifying, but unexpected result.

An area of pride.

The items that worked well in the project, were those that we had the clearest vision of "what" we wanted to accomplish.  For example, in our side yard we had a space where we wanted to have a seating area where we could have the experience of being completely surrounded by flowers in the summer.  We sketched the area out, and knew it great detail what it would look like down to the specific type of stone work and plants that would be in that space.  My husband and I did all of the work in that space (so there were fewer communication issues than if we were working with contractors).

Learn from the mistakes

If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about the project, it would be how I handled some of the external contractors that we hired.  We had significantly different experiences with contractors throughout the project, and much of the difference hinged on the contracts that we had in place up front.  As a trained and experienced project manager, I "should" have known better.  But, knowing what to do, doesn't always translated into doing what we should do.

References:

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

Project Management Welcome!

For the next couple of months, this blog will be exploring Project Management of Learning Projects.

An extra special welcome to my EDUC-6145-3 cohorts!