Describe a project, either personal or professional, that experienced issues related to scope creep.
Background Information
Working in a non-profit agency sometimes can be challenging, demanding of your time, talents (abilities to multi-task) and being a productive, dependable and knowledgeable team player.
I was assigned to work with our adult education program and workforce development program. These were two different service model programs that offered an employability skills training curriculum that enhanced job readiness skills and job seeking skills. My role in both programs focused on providing case management services and f2f instruction by following our curriculum, for the employability soft skills training
Adult Education Literacy Program
The adult education program provided adult learners an opportunity to complete their high school education by participating in GED preparation-literacy activities, upgrade academic skills (math, reading, writing and science) via f2f and computer-based academic instruction. The program also offered an official GED practice testing- offered to determine readiness to take an Official GED Test and employability. The employability part of the program was my role to develop individual plans for the adult learners, which had to include credentials of employability skill development in oral communication, resume development, college application development, and other activities that makes the college/career transition smoother.
Workforce Development Employability Skills Training Program
The Workforce development program provided services to individuals with employability challenges that were chronically unemployed, had learned dependence on entitlements (welfare/government recipients), people with servere underdevelopment socialization skills and assisting ex-offenders to migrate back into their communities as working class citizens.
What specific scope creep issues occurred?
While working in both programs at the same time I had a set working schedule that included specific days and times that I should report to each program. They were located in separate locations and I had two program managers to report too. The program manager for the workforce program was my direct manager for five years prior to my assignment in the adult education program. We had a great working relationship and she depended on my work ethics because I had a lot of program and procedures knowledge and experience working with our trainees, program funders, contractors and management. Prior to reporting to the adult education program, I had built a rapport with that manager and she was working at my location approximately one year before taking over the adult education program. She learned about through conversation with management and had the opportunity to observe my work ethics, personality and passion I had with working with our trainees and requested to work with me. I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to do something different and challenging.
In the adult education program, I had to develop and design all program processes, soft skills training instruction and learn about my role as an academic advisor. I accomplished this with ease and transition in to my role and got good at it.
Issues
Program manager for the workforce program was threated about sharing my talents, and time and began to demand that I increase my time with the program. This was not necessary because I had gotten a routine and was able to complete this program tasks ahead of schedule. The adult education program was demanding more of my time and need the attention especially by being the primary person to design and develop training materials and procedures. It got so hectic that I had to do adult education tasks on my other program-scheduled time and this caused management feud.
How did you or other stakeholders deal with those issues at the time?
The program manager for the adult education program was supportive and was willing to adjust my time even though she knew I needed more time with her program. She would request meetings with the other program manager so my schedule could be adjusted etc. There was no cooperation from the workforce program manager and things got out of control and to the point that I had to go to the Program Director. Let me just say that the workforce program manager got her way and I was relieved of my duties from the adult education program immediately.
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?
If I had been in the position of managing the project, I would have used the Project Life Cycle-Start phase and network diagram.
Life Cycle Phase (Start phase): Identify the people who will be working on the project and start to develop formal agreements for the use of equipment, facilities, vendors and other resources (Portny, et.al, 2008, p. 127). At minimum, I would have done the following:
· Launching a meeting with management and the employee schedule to work both programs
· Discuss the employee’s assume roles in both programs
· Collectively brainstorm with management and employee the potential tasks to be completed in both programs
· Create a tentative project schedule that would allow flexibility for the employee to work in both programs. Allow for schedule changes if needed as long as both managers and employee agree and can see the benefit
Network Diagram: A flow chart that illustrates the order in which activities need to be performed in a project (Portny, et.al, 2008, p. 150). Using this network diagram could reduce management and team member’s frustration. Three elements are included in the network diagram event, activity and span time. I would have used span time because it seems appropriate and the format-Activity-on-the-arrow (a traditional approach) for this issue.
Span Time: The actual calendar time requested to complete an activity (durations/elapsed time). This involves the amount of work effort required, and peoples availability (Portny, et.al, 2008, p. 150).
Activity-on-the-arrow: A type of network diagram; referred to as activity-on-the node, the classical approach or the traditional approach (Portny, et.al, 2008, p. 193).
The network diagrams would show the descriptions of activities such as work to be performed by whom that would include mental and physical activities. So that team members, internal stakeholders (Adult Education and Workforce Development program managers) can have a visual aid tool to recognize the amount of work it can take to complete tasks, and activities in each program. This would also show that when the project team person needs flexibility to complete an activity that may be out of the specific span of time schedule that it would be ok to do so.
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.
