Analyzing Scope Creep

 

Have you ever been so excited about a project and envisioned the perfect results so clearly, but didn’t put much thought into all the planning details that would be needed along the way? Or have you been so enthusiastic about the possibility of the many different directions the project could take, that all of a sudden it seems that the project has taken on a life of its own and has become out of control? Scope creep can happen quite easily with both personal and professional projects. Unfortunately, scope creep can have negative effects on the project. In project management, scope creep is defined as, “changes, continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project’s scope, at any point, after the project begins and occurs when the project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled” (Wikipedia, 2022).

I took on a personal project several years ago to refinish my daughter’s bed frame. It was a day bed with a trundle with high quality and functional mechanisms, so I thought it would be well-worth updating its’ looks. I have finished unfinished furniture before, so I mistakenly thought I had all the skills needed in combination with my father-in-law who was great with spray-gun painting. Therefore, the only cost involved would be the cost of the materials. In my mind, envisioning her room with matching white furniture took precedence over thinking about the project tasks and the schedule more carefully. I initially thought it would take 1-2 days to strip it, 1-2 days to paint and 1-2 days to fully dry.

Well, long story short, it would be six months before her bed was returned to her room. There were gold decorative plates that had to be taken off. The holes left behind needed to be patched. This detail was left out of my initial plans. It took about 5 days to strip, sand, and patch the bed frame well- enough to be painted. There were additional costs for better tools because sandpaper alone did not cut it. It was much more labor-intensive than planned. Refinishing is not the same process as finishing unfinished furniture! In our climate, it hardly rains in the desert, so the weather was not an initial factor. However, unbearable heat becomes a factor. I had planned on being done before the summer hit. I did not account for the windy, thus non-paint days that would occur either. Then, sadly, my father-in-law became very ill mid-way through the project. He wanted to finish the project for his granddaughter, so he would ask that we postpone the project until he was feeling better. Unfortunately, that day never came, but summer came all too quickly. The project would have to wait. We ended up paying my friend’s dad to use his spray gun to paint. So, the project was over budget by $300, beyond the anticipated completion date by six months, and the quality of the paintwork did not compare to my father-in-law's craftsmanship.  

Looking back now from the lens of project management, a more thorough and detailed task analysis should have been done including the skill level needed for each task. The scheduling should have included cushioning for uncontrollable variables, such as weather and team member availability. I now know that in our climate, a project like this must be started in the Fall/early Winter and not the Spring, if it involves outdoor work. A more realistic plan with a better cost/benefit analysis would have allowed us to decide if this project’s ROI was worth it. Other options could have been considered such as selling it and purchasing a quality used bed frame that was already in good shape, or leaving it as it was, saving money, and buying something new. But once we were into the project, and there was already an initial investment, the other options didn’t seem feasible. Although the project was finished, the project completion results were not optimal, because many decisions were based on assumptions from past experiences, rather than good planning.  According to Peter Landeau, “Good project managers don’t just make decisions on gut instinct. They prefer to minimize risk to the best of their ability and act only when there is more certainty than uncertainty” (Landau, 2021, p.1.).

References

Landau, P. (2021, June 9). Cost-benefit analysis for projects: A step-by-step guide. ProjectManager. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/cost-benefit-analysis-for-projects-a-step-by-step-guide

Scope creep. (2022, April 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep