How come children’s birthday
parties are the easiest examples for scope creep? What starts out as a small party in the park
explodes into a big party in the park with sports, piñata and M&M
characters! It ended up being very fun
for everyone, but it was a lot more planning and cost than originally budgeted
for.
I like Michael Greer’s (2010) definition
of project scope:
Scope change
may be defined as any addition, reduction, or modification to
the
deliverables or work process as outlined in your original project plan. Change
of
scope is
normal — it’s not necessarily a problem. In fact, scope changes can be
beneficial
when they allow the project team to respond sensibly to changing conditions
that exist
outside the project. This can help ensure that project deliverables remain
relevant.
It makes me feel better about how the birthday party planning was
managed and our end result of this huge party in the park. Change is not necessarily a problem and
luckily budget was not a huge issue or it would have been disastrous.
Here’s what happened:
Project Requirements and Scope
The party was for my great-nephew’s
6th birthday party. I offered
to help my niece with the expenses for the party and with the planning. Jamal only wanted a few friends together to
play in the park. He did want an M&M
birthday cake and for us to BBQ some hamburgers and hot dogs. Hot dogs and potato chips were the desired
menu items along with the chocolate M&M cake.
Here was the first project plan:
Jamal
Birthday Party
- 10 kids from classroom and our family (10 or so)
- Picnic lunch in the park
- BBQ hamburgers and hot dogs
- Chips and sodas
- M&M themed birthday cake
We
thought we would just keep it simple and small. We hand made really cute
invitations for his M&M theme that he wanted and we had Jamal deliver them
to his classmates. When the people at my niece’s church heard about the party,
they wanted to be invited too. So
we did invite them. We made more invitations
and handed them out to more people at the church.
Scope Creep
The
above quickly turned into:-
10 kids from classroom, our family, + 5 families from church (big families)
- Picnic lunch in the park
- BBQ hot dogs for the kids and chicken for the adults
- Chip, sodas, potato salad
- M&M themed birthday cake
- M&M piñata
- M&M plastic characters rented from the party store that will hold the kids prizes for the games in them.
- Baseball game
I was shocked by the time we were
done! It really exploded into a party
that stretched my allotted budget from about $100.00 plus my gift to him to $300.00
plus my gift. As the PM, I let the
project get away from us because I wanted Jamal to have a nice party and for
all us to have fun. Which it was.
In order to learn from this
mistake, I have done a Looking back and doing a project analysis, I can see
that the original expectations were not realistic. We really did make the part too small in size
and should have known that it was not feasible to plan a small party with such
a big family and leaving out friends from church.
It was a lot of work, fun, family,
and friends together and in the end, the kids had a blast that day in the park.
The more the merrier, right?
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
