Scope Creep: Project Obstacle or Opportunity?

According to Lynch & Roecker (2007) less than 30% of software development projects succeed.  Success is determined by the triple constraints of time, scope, and resources with very few projects being completed on time, under budget, and within project specifications.   Like IT projects, Instructional Design projects often fall into the unsuccessful category, and most experts attribute these failures to scope creep (Stolovich, n.d.; Portny et al., 2008; Greer, 2010).    Scope creep refers to the expansion of a project’s initial scope based on changing needs, technologies, or supporter requests.   There’s a natural tendency for project team members to want to improve the project as more information becomes available (Portny et al., 2008).   Every change in the number or quality of project outputs affects the amount of time, money, and resources needed to complete the project.   Scope creep is normal for most projects and can be a good thing, but it needs to be managed.  In fact, most modifications are the result of changes in vision, budget, or needs.  Some degree of scope creep can be expected as it ensures the project deliverables are still relevant upon completion (Portny et al., 2008).    I can recall several projects that experienced tremendous scope creep while I was working on them, but I will focus on one for now.

I had the pleasure of working in a start-up high school a few years ago and was charged with creating an online magazine that was completely student-run.  Let me give you some background before diving into scope creep for this project.   The high school was designed on an early college model with curriculum directly aligned to those of historically black colleges and universities.  It offered college credits through these partner universities.   Because the school was designed as a full-day program on an 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. schedule, students were scheduled to finish their high school diploma by the end of the junior year, leaving the senior year for earning college credits.   Classroom training happened in the morning and project work took place in the afternoon.  The school was also set up on a quarterly basis rather than a semester program so that students could focus on one subject at a time.  For instance, some of my students had Foundations of Writing and World Literature in one quarter.   Following classroom instruction in the morning, they would work on projects including the online magazine, personal business plan development, and the operation of a mall store.   Our student body was comprised of inner-city youth – many of whom did not have the prerequisite skills to succeed in a pre-college environment.  Instruction involved a lot of differentiation in the classroom, competing agendas, and distractions.   While the work was rewarding, the environment presented several challenges for school projects.  

With the online magazine, the initial scope involved topics germane to student entrepreneurship, the sponsor university, and business events.    As we began investigating and writing stories, faculty from other areas of the school suggested that we include stories on science fairs, sporting events, and community affairs.   All of these requests came before the site was active, and we needed to have it live by the end of the first quarter.  Moreover, we experienced lack of availability concerning some technical requirement, so the project was converted to a newsletter posted on the school website vs. being independent website.   The change in scope from an online magazine to a newsletter was easier to manage, so it saved some time, but the other changes involved more time and effort.   We did not oblige them all, but enthusiasm from the school’s founder moved us toward a broader, more inclusive scope.  I would say this was a change in vision.  We also experienced problems with changing priorities as a result of environmental factors and the addition of tighter time constraints with competing projects.   

Having greater insight on project management skills, I might have done the following to better control scope creep on the magazine project:

·         Requested that story ideas be submitted in writing

·         Acquired approval for major scope changes from the project sponsor (school founder & principal)

·         Updated the project planning documents (schedule, budget, and resource allocation) to establish a new baseline for measuring project success

·         Monitored student progress against the planning documents

·         Tracked risks factors like the environmental concerns described above

Armed with this kind of detail, I might have been able to negotiate for more resources and time.  

In all, several editions of the school magazine were produced and the project provided hands-on experience for students to practice investigative and writing skills.   The expansion of topics made the newsletter more appealing to the entire student body, and it was well received.  

References

 Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge

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. 

Stolovich, H. (n.d.), Monitoring Projects [Video]. Laureate Education. Available from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com.

Estimating Training Dollars & Cents

Instructional designers often function as project managers for teams of designers, graphic artist, subject matter experts, facilitators, and other stakeholders.  In leading the band, budgeting can be a high stakes activity; It's is a matter of walking through the project tasks and determining what resources are needed, when they are needed, and for what duration.   This process may sound easy, but oversights can be costly.  Armed with good information, project managers can translate hours, services, and materials into hard costs.  Following are a few internet resources to help with cost estimates:  

Don Clark’s website, Big Dog & Little Dog’s Performance Juxtaposition has a wealth of information on estimating training costs including development time.   The site also provides guidelines for instructor preparation time and a very useful cost spreadsheet that allows adjustments for the expertise level of the project’s instructional designer(s) and the complexity of the project’s multimedia components (Clark, 2010).  

Defelice & Kapp (2009) provides average development time statistics for various types of instruction.   Karl Kapp, one of the authors, is a well known expert in the instructional design field, but most interesting thing about this article is that it’s based on the collective experience of 47 practicing instructional designers.   The survey was done in 2003, and then again in 2009 to get a feel for the impact of new authoring software on development time.  Surprisingly, some of the more complex training designs take longer to produce with new software.  You can read the article for an explanation on why this is so, but the development time table included in the article is very helpful.  I can see using it as a reference on an ongoing basis.   

Chapman Alliance is a learning consulting company (Chapman, 2010).  They’ve compiled data collected from 249 organizations, representing 3,947 learning professionals in industries from manufacturing and telecommunications to insurance and higher education.  The research is presented in a PowerPoint presentation.  I found slide number 14 especially useful because it lists common tasks for instructional design projects including average percentages of total project time spent on each task.  For novice project managers in instructional design, this information can be helpful as a guideline.  It’s important to talk to your own team members, but it would be interesting to compare feedback against the Chapman survey results because it reflects feedback from a broad spectrum of learning specialists.  

Resources

Clark, D.R. (2010). Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

Chapman, B. (2010). How Long Does it Take to Create Learning? [Research Study]. Published by Chapman Alliance LLC. http://www.chapmanalliance.com/

Defelice, R. & Kapp, K. (2009) Time to Develop One Hour of Training. ASTD. Retrieved from http://www.astd.org/LC/2009/0809_kapp.htm