Scope Creep Can be Overwhelming
Reviewing projects post-mortem, or after the finished product has
been delivered has important benefits. Learning from experience can be very beneficial
(Terzieva and Morabito, 2016). Taking the time to develop a list of pitfalls,
can help instructional designers and project managers avoid those same pitfalls
in future projects. For this blog post, the project being reviewed post-mortem culminates
in a multimedia presentation of an organizational profile, including, the
analysis of a change that the organization underwent. For the assignment, it scored high marks.
However, in retrospect, it was not a completed project backed with enough pride
to be included in the instructional design portfolio.
The processes included in the project that were successful were
all related to the analysis phase which included staff interviews. Explanations
of the company culture, which was a school district, the leadership, in this
case, district administration, and the effects of crisis remote teaching during
the pandemic from the teacher’s perspective were done well. Part one of the
deliverable document was comprised of descriptions of the change process, the
resistance encountered, communication strategies, and overall effectiveness.
Part two of the deliverable document was composed of further analysis of the
change and how the leaders planned and implemented the change process. As a
leader, it is always better to gain insight and input from your team before
making big decisions (Schermerhorn et al., 2008). Part three was a 5–7-minute
video presentation. The part one and two deliverable documents were thorough
and rooted in theory. The video presentation had some decent instructional
design components, but overall, was too deep in scope. Conclusions and
recommendations were not clearly communicated because the topic was so broad. Overall,
the multimedia presentation complied with Mayer’s instructional design
principles, such as the principles to reduce extraneous processing including
the coherence, signaling, redundancy, spatial, and contiguity principles (Mayer,
2014).
The change analyzed was crisis remote teaching, which became too
large of a topic. Scope creep set in as a passion for the subject grew in the
design and development phase. Narrowing down the content in the deliverable
analysis documents to create a sound multimedia presentation,
with only 5-7 minutes of viewing time became difficult and frustrating.
Choosing to uncover how crisis remote teaching affected the organization in one
specific area, such as student engagement for example, rather than an overview
of all the effects of pandemic teaching would be a better path to take in
designing a project like this one again. Creating a statement of work (SOW) to
define the project’s approach, deliverables, timeline, and budget, would have
made the end product more successful (Laureate Education, n.d.). Overall, the
final video presentation complied with Mayer’s instructional design principles
in general, but the design could have been of higher quality. Without the scope
creep issue, the content would have been more concise and more time could have
been spent designing and developing the best quality materials.
When looking through the rearview mirror, it is clear that this
project is an example of the negative effects of scope creep. All of the ideas
included in the project are valid and beneficial, however, they should not all
be included in one project. There is enough content for several more projects
when broken down into smaller topics with clearer objectives. Now that an
understanding that scope creep happens frequently has been gained, a plan to
avoid this pitfall with new projects can be created before it ever has a chance
to set in.
Mayer, R. E. (2014). The Cambridge handbook of
multimedia learning. The University of Cambridge.
Project
kickoff [Video]. (n.d.). Laureate Education. https://class.waldenu.edu
Terzieva, M., & Morabito, V. (2016). Learning from
experience: The project team is key. Business Systems Research, 7(1),
1–15. https://doi.org/10.1515/bsrj-2016-0001
Thank you for your excellent review of the post-mortem process as it pertains to project management. Reflection is such a critical skill. I have found it to be extremely useful in almost every facet of life, so it makes sense that reflection would be impactful with regard to project management as well. It almost seems to me like a necessary step in the entire process or life cycle of the project. It should be an automatic, or built in step that must be completed. I get why it might not be all the time, which is like due to lack of resources. However, it absolutely makes total sense to do one after each large project. According to Collier, DeMarco, and Fearey (1996), there tends to be a lot of lip service that sounds a project post-mortem; thus, establishing a structure or a standard process for project post-mortem would be beneficial and make it more manageable. One of the major parts of project post-mortem, according to McAvoy (2006) is to evaluate if the project succeeded at meeting its objectives. Additionally, project post-mortems can teach the organization about what went right and what went wrong about the project (McAvoy, 2006). This is extremely helpful when it is time to pick up a new project.
ReplyDeleteYou commented that the project that you recently completed was related to the pandemic. You shared that scope creep, indefinitely, set it and you quickly realized that it would be better to focus on a smaller area of remote teaching, such as student engagement, would have been a better way to focus the project’s energies. I hope that taking a look back for this assignment was helpful in that the next time you do a project, you can look at the takeaway from this project and learn that it is important to narrow the focus. I understand that other elements of remote teaching would have been useful too, but a narrow focus can also be very beneficial. The extraneous ideas can be used for additional projects or projects that build off of that one.
Thanks,
Amanda
References
Collier, B., DeMarco, T., & Fearey, P. (1996). A defined process for project post mortem review. IEEE Software, Software, IEEE, IEEE Softw, 13(4), 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1109/52.526833
McAvoy, J. (2006). Evaluating the Evaluations: Preconceptions of Project Post-Mortems. Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation, 9(2), 65–72.
I enjoyed reading your take on the project post-mortem process and the example you provided. Scope creep sneaks into a project quickly when team members, leaders, or other stakeholders get excited about the progress being made and are inspired (Walden University, n.d.).
ReplyDeleteI believe your suggestion on how the project could have been focused differently to keep it from running wild was a smart one. That would offer the content in more "bite-sized" portions to the learners and would also actually set up the ID and PM with potential for future jobs. I could easily see each of those separate areas becoming a different segment to a full series!
Penny Jordan
Reference:
Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Overcoming ‘scope creep’ [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu
Hi Lori,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post mortem review. I too completed the change analysis assignment in a previous class. I appreciate your thoughtful review of your subject matter and the scope creep you experienced during your presentation creation.
In reflecting back on your project experience, you bring up an important component of project management: applying the knowledge from a previous project experience to future projects (Terzieva & Morabito, 2016).
Reference
Terzieva, M., & Morabito, V. (2016). Learning from Experience: The Project Team is the Key. Business Systems Research Journal, 7(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1515/bsrj-2016-0001
The use of Mayer's principles of design was a smart choice when it came to designing your multimedia presentations.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand from your posting, your project topic would have also benefited in segmenting. One of the principles Mayer's discusses is segmenting which states that more complex material needs to be broken down into small chunks (Mayer, 2014). By doing so you are able to give out more information without the possibility of extraneous processing. This also allows you to provide different angles to a topic.
Reference
Mayer, R. E. (2014). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. The University of Cambridge.