Analyzing Scope Creep

This week in my EDUC 6145 Course, we have been discussing scope creep and how it can heavily affect a project. 

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

         The project was helping my cousin getting ready for her ready and setting up for the ceremony. My cousin and I both live in Atlanta, Georgia, and she was planning a wedding in Destin, Florida, I was her maid of honor. It was a small intimate wedding on the beach. On the morning of the wedding is when scope creep began to make its way in. Early that morning, we thought that we were getting an early start, but later realized that we didn’t wake up early enough. We woke up around 6:00 a.m., for a 10:00 a.m. wedding. We began getting ready around 6:00 by taking showers and doing our hair. Eight o’clock a.m. soon rolled around, so we decided to grab a quick breakfast. Eight thirty soon approach and so we headed back to the room to get ready. We soon became overwhelmed.

What specific scope creep issues occurred?

         The time began to get the best of us causing us to run behind. It was nearing 9:00 a.m., when we realized that my cousin’s hair was not finished and we still needed to get her in her gown. Not to mention that we were supposed to leave the hotel by 9:30 to make it down to the beach. To much of my surprise, all of a sudden I hear my other cousin who was a bridesmaid began arguing with the bride about how they aren’t as close as they used to be. You can only imagine how the bride began to feel. Dr. Stolovitch said that everything will demand your attention and there will always be conflicts (Laureate Education Inc., n.d.)This entire ordeal had to be dealt with, in addition to finishing my cousin’s hair and putting her in her gown. Long story short, we didn’t leave the hotel until 10:30.

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

         I have a personality that is carefree and I don’t like when things are in disarray and people are upset. In order to allow the bride to regain composure I spoke to my other cousin (bridesmaid) and told her that this is not the appropriate time to bring up this issue. In addition to speaking with her, I made a joke which made my cousin (the bride) laugh and she started feeling much better. It took the bride a minute to recover, but she began feeling much better. I also communicated with the groom about our estimated time of arrival so that he could communicate that with the preacher.

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?

I think that I would have better managed by setting a schedule for things. I would have sat down and generated times for each task that I needed to complete on my wedding day. I would have tasked people for the set-up and possible made an agenda for the big day. Dr. Stolovitch states that you should draw from your team and turn to them and talk with them about your problems (Laureate Education Inc., n.d.). I know that some people say that bride-zillas are horrible, but at the end of the day everyone wants their fairy tale wedding. I think there are right and wrong ways to go about managing things. After all, failing to plan is planning to fail. Another preventative measure would have been to hold a team meeting to share progress and issues and to sustain productive and trusting relationships (Portny et al., 2008). Since it was such a small wedding that was dependent upon everyone’s help, things should have been better managed.

References

Laureate Education Inc. (n.d.). Monitoring Projects. Video presentation.

Portny, S.E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project Management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Communicating Effectively

            We were asked to observe a piece of communication in three different modalities: as written text, as audio, and as video. Pause after receiving the communication in each modality, and reflect upon what you interpret the message to mean.

Here is what I observed from each communication modality.

Email:

Through an email, the message can come off a little rude. Instead of saying that you need that person to send you the report a.s.a.p., she went on in saying that the receiver is going to make her run behind if they haven’t done your work. She went further on, saying that if you haven’t finished your work; just send me what you have. This could come off as you saying that the receiver is not doing their work at all.

Voicemail:

This message wasn’t taken as being so rude because you could hear the tone of voice from the source. She sounded a little more relaxed in this setting.

Face-to-Face:

The smile at the end made her seem really friendly. I guess I could sense more concern in her voice because of the face-to-face environment. It also made me feel more sympathetic and would possibly make me want to get those documents to her sooner.

•    How did your interpretation of the message change from one modality to the next?

    Starting off with the email I felt as though the message could be interpreted in any way, which could possibly leave the receiver upset. The voicemail was able to give me a sense of how that person felt by hearing the tone of their voice in the message left. The face-to-face message seemed to be the most effective because the body language and tone of voice brought clarity to the sender’s message.

•    What factors influenced how you perceived the message?

    The tone of voice, written language, and body language were all key factors that influenced the way that I interpreted the message. According to Portny, et al. (2008), another way to avoid messages being perceived the wrong way is to avoid having an informal discussion with only some of the people who are affected by or involved directly with the specific topic.

•    Which form of communication best conveyed the true meaning and intent of the message?

    I would prefer a face-to-face meeting on any occasion or at least Skype. The reason being because there is less chance that someone will interpret what you are saying negatively if they could see and hear how you are delivering the message. There is little room for misunderstandings when someone is delivering a message in person. Although there may still be some confusion, it is easier cleared up through a face-to-face communication rather than voicemail or written communication.

•    What are the implications of what you learned from this exercise for communicating effectively with members of a project team?

    These activities made me realize that words are not always expressed effectively and can be taken in multiple different ways. The best way to communicate with a project team would be a face-to-face meeting if time permits. Dr. Stolovitch (n.d.) stated that there are two big things to remember about communication. He said remember to avoid ambiguity and document everything. Throughout working on a project a relationship with the stakeholders and team members over time, and they will learn what you can or cannot say to one another.

References

Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project management planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Stolovitch, H. (Performer) (n.d.). Communicating with stakeholders. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/blackboard/execute/launcher?type=Course&id=_2652514_1&url=

Learning from a Project "Post-Mortem"

Project: Operation Donation for Adairsville

This project was one that I guided my students through in my classroom. We were talking about the characteristics of a great citizen and one of the words was compassionate. The day before, a tornado hit North Georgia and destroyed the city of Adairsville. I asked the students what was a way that we could show or compassion toward Adairsville’s tornado victims. They began discussing multiple ways that we could show our compassion and soon decided on a food, clothing, and shoe drive.

Phase I: Determine Need and Feasibility

How could we have improved our need-feasibility or analysis phase?

Success: We were able to collect a bulk of items that we donated to the tornado victims in Adairsville.

Failure: We should have communicated with the donation centers prior to deciding on how we wanted to help Adairsville tornado victims. By communicating with the donations centers, we could have raised money or had our school donate the items that they needed the most.

Phase II: Create Project Plan

How accurate were our original estimates of the size and effort of our project? What did we over or under estimate?

Success: We ended up having enough space to drop off all of the donations that were sent in by parents and students alike. All of my students worked well together to accomplish the same goal, which made it easy to do. My students were so excited about the good deeds that they were doing, that they all wanted to ride to Adairsville to give the donations to the victims themselves. The IB coordinator at my school assisted my students and I with this action plan, just like Portny, et al (2008) insisted that you consult with upper management about limitations regarding desired outcomes.

Failure: Next time I would plan ahead, and ask multiple parents in other classrooms to drive to Adairsville to ensure that we will have enough space. We should have planned where we were going to keep all of the donations, prior to the kick-off of the event. We ended up having to put accepted donations in any rooms that we could find. Early in the production portion we realized that we would not have enough time to construct an event, because we wanted to be immediate help for Adairsville.

Phase III: Create Specifications for Deliverables

Did all the important project players have creative input into the creation of the design specifications?

Success: I was extremely proud of the posters, flyers, and videos that my students made. They were really creative and informative at the same time. We made sure that each flyer, poster, and speech informed our audience of the name of our project, what we were doing, where we were doing it, when we were doing it, and the time.

Failure: I had some students who did not participate in this entire process, which was upsetting to me. I would have liked to give them a specific job, like a monitor. The monitor could have walked around and helped other groups with spelling and neatness on their portion of the project. However over time, team members will become more familiar with each other’s skills, knowledge, and operating style (Portny, et al., 2008).

Phase IV: Create Deliverables

Did all the important project players have creative input into the creation of the deliverables?

Success: I was proud that my students were able to come together on a collective goal. The deliverables were prepared and completed in a timely manner.

Failure: I wish we had time for the students to switch roles within the project. I think that some of my students would have done a great job in multiple roles. Because the project was time sensitive there wasn’t much time to allow students to explore the different roles of the project. We could have also improved the look and neatness of the deliverables improved if I would have allowed students to take the deliverables home to make. To ensure student involvement next time we could allow students do whatever is comfortable to them.

Phase V: Test and Implement Deliverables

Was our implementation strategy accurate and effective?

Success: The speech and video that my students made was a successful medium of delivery that informed the entire school of our project. I called multiple donation agencies to make sure they were accepting donations before we drove to Adairsville and set up a time for the volunteers to meet up and load the vehicles.

Failure: We put the posters and flyers up a couple of days before the event. However, we could have received more donations if we put the information up for a longer period of time. The donations were kept in many different places and were not organized properly.

Project managers usually write a statement of work before starting on a project. If I would have written a statement of work for this project, students would have been more organized, and would have felt a sense of responsibility if they each had to sign the statement of work. According to Portny, et al. (2008), many successful project managers think of Statements of Work as binding agreements in which project managers and their teams should commit to producing certain results. The purpose was to help the tornado victims of Adairsville by hosting a donation drive. The objectives were that the tornado victims would have a temporary relief of needed items. The constraints written would have been pertaining to our time sensitive project and assumptions were that we thought we knew what the tornado victims needed. In reality we should have investigated and found out what they needed.

References

Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project management planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.