Defeat scope creep with effective change approval criteria

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Scope creep is an insidious ooze of changes that can sink a project. Robust change management that thoroughly evaluates the merits of proposed scope changes is key to thwarting the creepy scope threat. One place to start is with solid change approval criteria. 

Typically, change approval criteria evaluates:

  • How scope changes
  • Project costs added or removed due to scope change
  • Schedule changes due to scope change

These evaluations are enough for small projects or very minor changes. For more significant scope change, it’s better to strengthen your change approval criteria. 

How does the scope change affect project risk? Change-related risk can vary. Adding new technology, tightening deadlines, or deploying multiple changes simultaneously can challenge your business. Examine the risk each change brings to your project and the business.

Does the scope change add stakeholders to the project? Adding stakeholders to an existing project can trigger replanning, alter success criteria, or lead to issues with prioritizing requirements. These activities can be very disruptive and should be carefully evaluated before approving a change.

Is additional integration involved? Increased integration of technical tools, business processes or both will add complexity to your project and expand your need for testing. This can also require additional specialized personnel on your project.

Are multiple vendors required? Multiple vendors add contract management time. In addition, vendors working together can add complexity and conflict, as vendor expectations and agendas may differ. Examine your history with vendors to assess the merit and impacts of a change.

Does the proposed change support the spirit of the project’s original scope? Ambitious or creative stakeholders can recommend project scope changes that won’t enhance or expand the original intent and business case for your project. Evaluate changes against the initial project purpose to ensure your projects remain focused and stay within triple constraint expectations.

Do you use other criteria to evaluate proposed project changes? If so, share with us in the comments section.

For more about change management, check out Scott Mautz’ Change Management Foundations course.

Coming Up

Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Client Essential Training will be published in a few months.

LinkedIn Office Hours April 6, 2022, 1:00PM MT- Embracing an Entrepreneurial Mindset in an AI-Driven World

Yesterday’s future is today’s reality. In order to fully take advantage of that reality, professionals need to think entrepreneurially while leveraging the latest technological advancements such as AI.
In this Office Hours session, Oliver Yarbrough and Bonnie Biafore will discuss how you can grow you career by –
– Harnessing an entrepreneurial mindset
– Leveraging AI to deliver successful projects
– Adjusting your outlook and approach to delivering value
– …and so much more
The world is changing. Ask yourself, “How will I adapt to these changes, so I can advance?”

LinkedIn Office Hours April 13, 2022, 1:00PM MT- Prerequisites for a Project Management Entrepreneur

Have you thought about going out on your own as a project manager, instead of being an employee? Seyi Kukoyi, PMP, and Bonnie Biafore, PMP, provide guidance for that journey in the course Become a Project Management Entrepreneur. But being your own boss isn’t for everyone. In this LinkedIn Office Hours event, Seyi and Bonnie welcome John Riopel and Oliver Yarbrough to a panel discussion about what you need to know before diving into the deep end of the PM entrepreneur pool. We will cover how to tell if you’re cut out for entrepreneurship; the difference between being a contractor and a business owner; skills and tools you need to be a PM Entrepreneur, and steps to take before you quit your job.

PMBoK7 Perspectives: Focus on Value

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In this edition of Project Pointers, we’ll explore how project managers can focus on delivering value the business, one of the new elements of project delivery in the Project Management Institute’s seventh version of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK7.) Here are a few significant ways to deliver value to your business as you manage projects. 

  • Focus on your approach, not just outcomes. The way project managers deliver their projects can be as important as the outcomes they deliver. Many projects are disruptive because they take operational leaders away from their day-to-day duties. Project managers who focus on value consult with the business regarding the scheduling of work. When deadlines are in jeopardy, they strive to understand business circumstances. For example, project team members may be temporarily called away to address an urgent situation that’s a higher priority than the project. Considering this, project managers keep stakeholders apprised of project status and listen when concerns are raised. The business will be more likely to engage in future projects when there is a focus on professional project delivery throughout the project lifecycle, as well as the outcomes projects produce. 
  • See value as qualitative and quantitative. PMI defines value as “the worth, importance or usefulness of something.” It’s important to understand that stakeholders’ assessment of the value of “usefulness” involves a lot more than how deliverables satisfy a business case. Value is determined by how deliverables support familiar processes and are integrated with tools and downstream processes, much more than what balance sheets show. The difference between a deliverable and a solution is how stakeholders accept it as part of their daily routine. You contribute value when deliverables are viewed as a solution.
  • A valuable project is only the beginning. Project delivery that embraces value leads to – more projects! Value received inspires confidence and generates more ideas for business improvement. These may generate project change requests to add scope, which can add value (as well as introduce risk.) Great project managers discuss how to maximize value, either by incorporating the change request or staging the request for phase 2 of the project. And they learn from those requests how to design downstream projects to deliver further improvements. In that way, delivering value is the start of an improvement journey, not the end.
  • Value supports strategy. The way projects are delivered can support or detract from corporate strategy. For example, a new business application could rely on an existing technical platform, or it can take advantage of a new architecture that is part of the corporate strategy. In a different context, a building may be constructed with sustainable principles in mind, utilizing clean energy and eliminating waste. Though it may be more difficult to support strategic initiatives, good project managers work with their teams and senior stakeholders to guide their projects to satisfy the short- and long-term goals of corporate strategies.  

If you have suggestions for focusing on value in projects, share with us in the comments section.

For more about delivering value, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up

Recording for Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Client Essential Training is complete. Look for the course to be published in a few months.

PMBoK7 Perspectives: Creating a Collaborative Team Environment

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Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

In this edition of Project Pointers, we’ll look at building a collaborative team environment, one of the new project delivery elements in the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK7.) Here are a few ways to create a collaborative team environment for your projects.

  • Define roles, not just responsibilities. Productive teams have clear roles and approaches, which can be defined by the project manager, team leader or the team themselves. Team members need to understand their roles, so they know where each person’s responsibility begins and ends, and how information or process steps will be passed from one person to the next. For example, “perform testing” describes a responsibility. That isn’t enough for someone to understand the role. Are they supposed to test a product at various points as it is built, or only the end product? Do they perform testing themselves or include a customer or end user? How and where will the test results be recorded and shared?
  • Organize sub-teams. Often, the best way to tackle a set of tasks is with a small group of people. Define sub-teams and identify who will coordinate the team’s efforts to share status with the project manager. This isn’t necessarily a team leader, but rather the person who will ensure proper coordination and communication as the sub-team performs its tasks. To reinforce collaboration, recognize the entire sub-team when items are completed, not just the team leader or coordinator.
  • Establish support and review standards. Teams that produce outstanding work use the collective experience and expertise of its members. Leverage that with a peer review process to assure deliverable quality. The peer review process is not to find fault, but to identify ways to produce superior work. To reinforce this approach, recognize both the individual who identified an improvement and the person who adopted the improvement into their deliverable. This supports a team environment where collaboration is recognized.
  • Focus on communication approaches. The larger your team, the more communication processes need to be defined and followed. This used to be straightforward, when periodic meetings would be scheduled in a conference room. This isn’t as easy today when team members work from offices, homes, and other locations. Different tasks and reporting requirements necessitate different communication mediums. For example, reporting task completions can be done via a virtual meeting tool. Reviewing a complicated technical deliverable requires rich communication that’s beyond the average person’s and work location’s capability with virtual meeting tools. The lesson here is twofold. First, pick the communication medium based on what the meeting needs to accomplish. Second, understand each team member’s capability with virtual tools when face to face meetings aren’t feasible. Make sure well-trained team members can put the full capabilities of virtual tools to use. 

Do you have any tips on building a collaborative environment? If so, share with us in the comments.

For more about team collaboration, check out Dana Brownlee’s Essentials of Team Collaboration course and Communication within Teams by Daisy Lovelace.

Coming Up

Recording for Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Client Essential Training is complete. Look for the course to be published in a few months.

PMBoK7 Perspectives: Be Adaptable

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Being adaptable as you manage your projects can support the success of your projects, a new element of project delivery in the Project Management Institute’s seventh version of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK7.) Here are a few beneficial ways to be adaptable as you manage projects. 

  • Don’t fixate on perfection. It would be nice to build a perfect plan with accurate estimates and task dependencies, but it’s not realistic. Instead, work on learning as your project progresses and being adaptable to change estimates and plans as events unfold. Change isn’t admitting you’re wrong! When proposing project plan changes, skilled project managers share what they’ve learned to educate their management teams. It’s far better to proactively change plans, rather than try to meet planned expectations that are now impractical or high-risk. In estimating, the focus should be on being “less wrong” as your project progresses and you can use new insights to construct better estimates and plans.
  • Watch and respond to your organization’s direction. Projects are launched to change capabilities for an organization and/or its customers. However, organizations aren’t static while projects progress. Circumstances can affect how the project fits into the organization’s direction. Projects may be postponed, slowed down, team members swapped, or project outcomes may need to be brought forward. Great project managers don’t wait until they’re told to alter a project’s direction. They watch what is happening in the organization and draft what-if changes to project plans for presentation to management. The adaptable project manager responds, versus reacts, to changes in the business. 
  • Launch open-ended organizational conversations. Great project managers develop ideas about how to deliver a project. And they are adaptable to the desires and ideas of key stakeholders. They initiate conversations with and between those key stakeholders to discuss approaches for delivering the project and they present their ideas in those conversations. They combine their ideas with ideas from stakeholders that hold merit and support the needs of the business. You might be nervous about conversations without knowing where they might lead, but the long-term outcome of collaborating and adapting to pragmatic stakeholder project delivery desires can outweigh those risks. 
  • Defer decisions. Better decisions are made when more information becomes available. Although waiting to set a direction can be stressful, delaying a decision can be the best way to adapt to some project situations. For example, your vendor may be coming out with an updated version of their product, but the release date isn’t finalized yet. Rather than gamble on using the new version or creating solid plans to use the current version, set the software decision point as late as possible in your plans. When your decision point arrives, you can use up-to-date information about the release to decide.  

How has being adaptable contributed to the success of your projects? Share your experiences in the comments section.

For more about adaptability, check out Dorie Clark’s How to Be an Adaptable Employee During Change and Uncertainty course.

PMBoK7 Perspectives: Apply Expertise

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Photo by Jose Aljovin from Unsplash

Today, we’ll explore how project managers contribute benefits with their expertise, one of the new elements of project delivery in the Project Management Institute’s seventh version of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK7.) Here are a few significant ways to apply your expertise in managing projects:

  • Complete project tasks. Most project managers have technical and industry expertise relevant to their projects. Completing technical tasks can be an appropriate and helpful contribution to the projects we manage (although it isn’t the project managers primary role.) But you shouldn’t take opportunities away from other team members, which they might perceive as restricting their growth.  
  • Coach your team members. The best project managers increase the capabilities of their team members who work on their projects. They provide technical guidance without dictating how to complete tasks. They also help others understand the practice of project management, so they can contribute to building work breakdown structures, verifying estimates, and confirming schedules. Because projects often have wide-ranging business implications, they coach people on business elements as well, such as communication, presentation skills, and managing risk.
  • Improve the practice of project management. Project managers are known for getting things done. They bring confidence to their management team that envisioned changes will come to fruition via the application of sound project management tools and perspectives. Applying your project management expertise can help improve your organization’s project management practices. Spreading the word about project management practices is an effective way to support your business. Guiding managers as they work with you to deliver projects is another impactful way to apply expertise and increase your business’ project delivery capability.
  • Provide perspectives for management. Respected project managers can help management understand which approaches to facilitating organizational change will be supported by line managers and which ones won’t be! Project work provides project managers with a view to how operational management handles the pressures of increased workload created by supporting projects. Project managers know who responds well, who doesn’t, and which competing workloads might interfere with project progress.

Have you contributed your expertise to your projects in other ways? If so, tell us about it in the comments section.

For more about project management, check out the Become a Project Manager learning path.