Question

Describe a project, either personal or professional, that experienced issues related to scope creep. What specific scope creep issues occurred? How did you or other stakeholders deal with those issues at the time? Looking back on the experience now, had you been in the position of managing the project, what could you have done to better manage these issues and control the scope of the project?

Answer 1

Describe a project, either personal or professional, that experienced issues related to scope creep. What specific scope creep issues occurred?

Let me consider a project like House building project, based on my professional experience, where scope creep could be a common issues, scope creep happens when do multiple changes in the project scope, or we extend the project scope with uncertainty, we don’t consider others constraints whenever changing the project scope, thus, entire project can be negatively affected by scope creep issues, here, for Building construction project, if we do multiple changes to the project scope or requirement without understanding the impact on time, cost, safety, resources, we may face various uncertainties for this project, Like project could be affected with issues like cost overrun, may not meet the time deadline, may face accidental risks, and others safety related issues, may acquire various stakeholder dissatisfaction, so there are various reasons to have the project scope creep like poor project change management and control, we and others stakeholders, team members may not be sufficiently aware of project objective, Project manager may not be in strong position to take decision, communication related problem, etc,

How did you or other stakeholders deal with those issues at the time?

Both me and others stakeholders should be focused on setting up change control procedures and follow such procedures when any changes come during project execution stage, let say, if changes come for any project requirements changes or scope changes, we must know what would be impact on time, cost and others factor, and we must account them as well for implementing such changes, otherwise doing follow up with poor change control procedure, scope creep problem will come, thus, all stakeholders need to be on such things,

Again, me and all stakeholders should documents all the related requirements for the project, they must be aware of such requirement before starting the project execution, again, Identifying, clarifying such requirements from all stakeholders all essential to prevent the scope creep issue,

Project schedule should be clear enough and should consider detailed tasks list, the schedule should be realistic and all stakeholders should participate into it, the schedule should also consider that what are the tasks to be performed and when to be performed, what about the milestone charts, again, project scope should be evaluated with considering the stakeholders importance and scope should be verified by stakeholders, again, stakeholder effective engagement and communication practices has strong role in combating the scope creep issues,

Looking back on the experience now, had you been in the position of managing the project, what could you have done to better manage these issues and control the scope of the project?

Here being a project manager I had been in the position of managing the project, here various practices can be followed to better manage the issues and control the scope of the project, here, and things are presented briefly:

• Here, requirement documentation should be done in well manner and stakeholder engagement and communication practices will take lead role here, and listing the requirements, project features and communicating them to all stakeholders also essential, so all stakeholders will be on the same page to better manage the issues and control the scope of the project
• Milestone list preparation, WBS Preparation, realistic schedule development will be helpful to combat this issue, and further contract documentation is required to manage such scope creep issue in formal way,