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 6^th 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.