Analyzing Scope Creep

Scope creep is a dreaded thing that can happen on any project, wasting money, decreasing satisfaction, and causing the expected project value to not be met (Larson & Larson, 2009). In this blog, I will discuss a project in which I experienced issues related to scope creep. 

Recently, I took on a home improvement project with my aunt in helping her to re-paint her home office. A project that was originally planned for three days took two-weeks to complete. We first wrote out a plan in which day one, we would go out to shop for paint, day two, we would begin to paint the room and day three, we would paint the ceiling. We were on track with our plan until we later realized that painting over a dark colored (red) wall with lighter paint was a challenge.

After buying the desired colored paint and painting half of the office, we noticed that the dark color was peeking through the new color. Well, we knew that this wouldn’t be ideal, so we stopped and spent the next few days researching and reconstructing our plan.

Our new plan consisted of spending one day prepping and priming the walls good. As first-time painters, silly of us to have thought that we can buy paint and paint a wall. It wasn’t that simple as we missed two important steps (prepping and priming). After, we spent two days painting and we were able to successfully complete the home office. What a long two weeks! 

This scope of this project was not clearly defined, and the expected timeline was altered due to poor goal setting. If a project skips detailed decomposition and requirements analysis, the scope of the project remains ambiguous (Larson & Larson, 2009). Because my aunt and I had no experience with painting, we were unaware of the steps and materials needed to effectively paint a wall. A work-break down structure (WBS) should have been created as a guide for this project. With this being so, trial and error allowed us to later sit down to reconstruct our plan.

Scope creep is sometimes unavoidable due to unforeseen occurrences. When scope creep happens, the project manager must work to protect the baseline of the project and define the scope change. Looking back on this project, I could have given myself time to research and educate myself on how to effectively paint a room, the materials I would need and the cost, and an accurate estimated time needed to complete the project. Abramovici (2000) stated that, no matter how well organized a project is, uncontrolled scope creep can break it. It is the project manager's responsibility to avoid scope creep or manage the implementation of the new scope into the project in the best possible manner.

 

Abramovici, A. (2000). Controlling scope creep. PM Network, 14(1), 44–48.

Larson, R. & Larson, E. (2009). Top five causes of scope creep and what to do about them. Project Management Institute.