Project Management Success Series: Part Five

Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com

Brandy shares her 15 years of experience in project management and has created a six-part series highlighting key elements to a projects success, specifically in the IT management industry.

Brandy Semore, Pinnacle’s Operations Manager

Follow these actionable steps and advice to help you improve the outcome of projects you lead or participate in at your organization.


Project Management Success: Part 5

SCOPE CREEP

What is Scope Creep?

Scope creep can be described as the uncontrolled changes or continuous growth in a project's scope. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled.


What Causes Scope Creep?

There are several reasons why projects experience this, but in my personal experience of 15 years of project management, I’ve narrowed down the key suspects to just two:

● Weak project managers● People pleasers


A weak project manager has loosely defined customer requirements, loosely defined scope, incomplete project plan, and weak project monitoring.


Weak Project Managers


People Pleasers

The downfall to people that are too eager to please the end user occurs when working on additional tasks, despite not being within scope. Here at Pinnacle, we call this “opening the hood.” This can cause a project to be finished incorrectly.

We have guidelines for successful change management and these guidelines are an integral part of our daily PMO business.

Here are the three guidelines we follow to help manage Scope Creep.


Three Steps to Managing Scope Creep


1. Define your Requirements

Clearly define everything up front.

You can only do this by first defining your requirements.

http://www.pbsnow.com/pinnacle-point/project-management-success-part-2-know-requirements/


2. Write your Project Plan

Next, conquer the project plan.

As we discussed in Write your Project Plan, one of the key goals for this deliverable is to manage scope.

http://www.pbsnow.com/pinnacle-point/project-management-success-part-3-write-project-plan/


3. Define your Requirements

Once you execute your project – you have to actively monitor it.

Reference your project plan every step during your status meetings and in your status updates – ensure others reference the plan throughout the project’s lifecycle.


Open Communication for Success

Open communication between our teams is an integral part of our plans.

Discussing scope changes up front enables all stakeholders to review and assess the time, money, and dependencies involved in adding any additional tasks.

Learn More

Have questions for Brandy? Email her at [email protected]


Project Management Success: Part 6 Close Out Together

Project Management Success Series: Part Five

Leadership & Management

Transcript of Project Management Success Series: Part Five