I had a hard time thinking of a professional project that caused scope creep. I decided to ask my co-worker, Aaron, who is the Director of my Communication Department if any project that he and I worked on caused scope creep. One of Aaron’s many responsibilities is the design and maintenance of the Web site. When I asked if him if he can recall a project that we together, he jokingly said - “yes, can you remember that microsite that worked on together? That project got pretty creepy”. Always the word smith, Aaron recalled the time that his Communication’s team and my Education Department wanted to create a microsite for an upcoming live conference http://clinicalcongress.gastro.org/.
Clum (2014) describes that “microsites are separate from a company's full website and are dedicated to serving one purpose - thus eliminating the clutter and distractions that come with a full website” (para 1). A microsite is basically a pretty Web page and is simple in both design and content. When my Education team met with our Communication Department, we explained that we just needed a simple microsite that would link out to content to our Organizations main Web site.
The confusion came about when my Education Team met with the Communication Department without me. I was out on vacation and my Education Team started to use technical terms interchangeably. For example, they would tell the Communications’ Team to create a web page inside the microsite. Note that the existing content that was already on our main server. If I was present, I would have told our Communications team to just link out to existing content (on our main web site).
So, the scope was being expanded by my Education Team. They were requesting redundant work from our Communications Department. I came back from vacation and the atmosphere was sour and nobody understood what went wrong. The Communication’s Department was irritated because of the extra work. My Communications team were asking themselves: “Why are we creating a whole new web site?” The Education Department was irritated and they thought “why can’t the Communication’s Department do their job and create some links?”
I was able to work with the Communications Department and simplify the microsite so that the links would just link out. Also, all of the major content would exist on the body of main microsite page. Further, my Education Department would have access to the main page and they could create the content.
I was scratching my head and wondering how can a simple Web page (forget web site) get so out of hand – so quick? I have to think that there some people in my Organization wanted to make things more complicated than they needed to. Lynch (2007) mentions that one of the reasons for scope creep is that a “project team may drift away from their original duties, which may be viewed as boring since the team may be in the more mundane development of the project” (p. 96).
Looking back at the project, I would like to think that after taking this course that I would have a better handle on future projects. Portny et al, (2008) mention that the major source of scope creep is when a project manager tries to avoid bureaucracy and takes on more responsibility (p. 346). Since, I was away from the project and I was on vacation, I don’t know if this course would have helped. However, the course and our subject matter (i.e. scope creep) are helpful for me in my role in my Organization because it allows me to understand the project management process and terminology.
References:
Clum, L. (2014, March 19). 5 brilliant microsites and why they're so effective. Retrieved from http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/5-brilliant-microsites-8135477
Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge. Copyright by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC via the Copyright
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.
5 comments:
Dear Mark,
You raised a highly relevant issue: mutual misunderstanding. People tend to use the same words but meaning them to refer to different (sometimes widely different) things. I would even dare to suggest that the problem of ambiguity of meaning is even more acute for speakers of Russian. In Russian, repetition, that is using the same word(s) twice within the span of, say, three sentences is regarded as poor style and is a grave linguistic fault. That is why, people try to resort to a host of synonyms when they formally address an audience. However, everyone knows (or, at least, suspect) that no two words can have completely identical meanings, each realizes quite a number of linguistic or extra-linguistic implications: my husband, for example, can call me Marina, wife, spouse, Mat’s mother, girl, but each reference will be used for a purpose that the others on the list cannot fulfill. Implications and overtones are everywhere.
As for terminology, terms are supposed to be highly narrow and specific in meaning (Galperin, … ideally. We have all come across terms that are interpreted and used differently by experts, and for non-experts, they all mean the same. I believe, you remember the confusion that the distinction between assessment and evaluation caused to most of our class.
Different people assigning different meanings to one language unit is one of the problems that I mentioned in my discussion post this week. I am certain, that the instructional design in Case Study24 failed to perform up to the client’s expectations merely because the client and himself had different understandings of what “interactivity”, “interaction”, and “authentic learning contexts” referred to. The client and the agent / performer must speak the same language, that is, use the same words to refer to the same things. It is sad, indeed, that, although most of us can speak (that is, produce sounds and grammatically correct sentences), most of us are poor communicators, for we fail to turn our sentences into real utterances that send a clear message (Nayer, 2002).
And again the problem of miscommunication takes us to the distinction between low-context and high-context cultures that has already surfaced in this course.
Thank you, Mark, for sparing yourself no effort in searching for a relevant case and, finally, identifying a risk that indeed waylays many a project.
Marina
References
Galperin, I.R.(2012). English stylistics (4th ed.). Moscow: URSS.
Nayer, V.L. (2002). Stylistics and pragmatics. Moscow: Moscow State Linguistic University
Mark,
I was surprised just as much as you were as to how quick the project could get so out of hand. Then, as I thought about it, I realized why. The most important factor when you are dealing with any project is communication. The lack of communication during the Education Team and Communication Department while you were on vacation was really crippling for the project. Not only did it have a negative impact on the actual project, but it also had a negative impact on the project's atmosphere as you mentioned as well. Your example reinstates how important communication is before, during, and after a project for ultimate success.
Mark,
After reading your post and through the comments, I agree with Marina. Mutual misunderstanding, as she said, is a large issue. Words are not always interchangeable, so it's important at the outset of a project to define terms for team members who may not have that previous knowledge.
When I wrote my post earlier this week, I had to think hard about a project to use as my example, but on Friday I had a similar experience. In less than 24 hours (from a 12:00 meeting on Thursday to 9:00 Friday morning), a plan that we had in place to work on a specific course got completely out of hand. It was very surprising to see how quickly things like that can happen, and how a lack of communication -- or communicating with the wrong people -- can have such an impact. I feel as though all the experience in the world and all the knowledge about project management can't completely erase these issues from projects. There will always be things that arise that make planning difficult. And your example is the perfect display that sometimes we really can't control it because we're not around to help!
Hi Mark,
After reading about your experience, and of others we have read in our ID Casebook such as the one mentioned on Case-Study 24: Margaret Janson, it seems that when key people are not present for the project, it throws thing out of proportion. The scope starts to creep. The mentioned case-study presents an issue when Martin Howe, a key person to the project's advancement, is out of reach (Ertmer, 2014, Pg. 223). Is this just the nature of the (mind you, am not an I.D.) job, or is there anything in your experience or opinion that could be done to avoid scope creep triggered by involuntary absence of a stakeholder.
Ruth
Reference:
Ertmer, P., Quinn, J. (Eds.) & Glazewski, K. (2014). The ID casebook: Case studies in instructional design (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Mark,
It is amazing how miss communication can make a huge mess. It just proves that common sense has a different meaning for everyone or in this case every department. Perhaps, the departments could have set up some ground rules at the beginning of the meeting to develop the vocabulary that would be used. This experience just validates the importance of having a manager to bridge the communication gap between the different parties of a project.
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