This is a true story. The company name
has been changed.
Background
Acme Corporation was doing a large
system replacement project with a very tight timeline. The project manager was
experienced and understood the importance of clarity in the scope definition.
The situation
The decision to implement the new
system was made by the company that owned Acme. The Acme employees wanted a
system more tailored to their current processes, and didn’t see any benefit to
being integrated with their owner’s system.
During the project, the Acme staff
repeatedly claimed that the software didn’t fit their processes and would have
to be customized to suit them.
The project manager recognized that the
project was in danger of falling prey to significant scope expansion.
Analysis and recommendation
The project manager reviewed the
requests that the employees made and compared them to the approved scope
statement.
Since the project manager had been
diligent in determining and documenting what was in and out of scope at the
beginning of the project, it wasn’t hard to compare to the employees’ requests.
The project charter had been created with and approved by the project sponsor,
so the sponsor’s approval of the scope was clear.
The project manager did accommodate
small requests that did not affect the time line of the project. However, all
other requests were documented for consideration after the go-live date.
Any appeals were referred to the
project change control process outlined in the project charter.
Epilogue
Acme’s system replacement finished on
time, despite the tight timeline. The project manager achieved this outcome by
ensuring a clear understanding of the project scope at the outset, and by
managing scope carefully during the project.
This specific case of attempted scope expansion
occurred when the company employees were not in favour of the product they were
implementing.
However, scope definition and scope management
is needed on all projects, and the analysis of the situation is appropriate for
all scope change requests.
Introducing change management might
also have been helpful in reducing the number of changes requested by the
employees.
Copyright
2015 Debbie Gallagher
