In an example of scope creep from my own personal experience I would like to highlight a recent event planned at my former job. In my former job, at times we were asked by our supervisor’s to plan sale events in our downtime or in periods when sales are running low. Alex, a co-worker of mine, came up with an idea for a sales event at one of our local universities during the school’s homecoming weekend right on campus. Alex was so excited about the event that we all bought into it and assigned him as lead on this project. So in turn Alex assigned specific duties to everyone with the hopes of this event becoming a huge success.
After each person was given their role and assigned their duties we set off to begin our planning. There was roughly two weeks to plan and implement the event. The duties assigned were someone in charge of inventory, someone in charge of acquiring the mobile equipment needed, another person in charge of food and refreshments, and Alex handled acquiring the location-getting permission from the school, and on campus advertisement. The day of the event came and everything was set perfectly according to the responsibilities we agreed upon in the beginning but little interest actually came to the event. A few college students participated but we didn’t see any alumni after all it was homecoming weekend.
Afterwards, everyone gathered to try to gain an understanding of what went wrong. One by one we went down our responsibility list and check off everything we did. Alex was last and he was able to check off everything on his to do list. Then all of a sudden one of my co workers stated to Alex “ Do you think things would have turned out differently if you advertised outside of campus and into the community ?” That became a valid question which made sense especially considering the only time the alums would be on campus would be during events. Afterwards Alex apologized, because that was a factor that he did not consider.
I believe this situation taught all of us to take more time to carefully plan our events and try to take every consideration under advisement. More importantly, we learned to be more critical of each others duties when we planned events from that point on.
Norris,
ReplyDeleteYou have some great points in how Alex should have advertised outside of the campus. Also, I like how you mentioned that the team members involved should be more critical of their coworkers throughout the project. I agree that this would help because everyone would be coming up with ideas and some putting their thoughts together.
Norris,
ReplyDeleteI believe had the project team leader brainstormed with the group about communication plan, you may have all arrived at the need to advertise outside the campus. At least, you discovered why many more people did not attend the event. At appears so easy to forget all the minute details of a project. I would have perhaps forgotten the importance of advertising to the larger community too. This is a good example of not enough scope creep.
Norris,
ReplyDeleteI think your example is an excellent reminder to keep all team members involved during the planning and “brainstorming” sessions. It sounds like all the tasks were delegated nicely, but it was the task list that wasn’t quite complete. It reminds me of so many projects I have been a part of. We would receive our “marching orders” and carry out our tasks, and in the back of my head, I’m wondering if the PM really thought of everything. I would reassure myself, “surely they would have thought of that and gave that task to someone else” or something similar. Usually, it came down to communication. If all members of the team have a copy of a detailed SOW and WBS, everyone knows what everyone else’s job is and if someone comes up with an idea that wasn’t on the list, it would be considered.
Norris,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog and very valuable information. I agree that if Alex would have shown interest and provided flyers outside of campus there would have been a better turnout. Although, you all did a wonderful job with making sure your checklists were completed. We all have to look back sometimes and think about what I could or should have done, but actually during that time we actually think that we are doing everything. Great post and information !
Norris,
ReplyDeleteI like your posting this week. I agree with you in that time and planning with any project will make it successful. A project of this kind needs excellant planning.