Project Management - Scope Creep - Essay Example

? Project Management Review 0 Scope Creep. Why the project manager is concerned The Scope creep regarding the project management is referred as the uncontrollable alterations in a project’s scope. It is regarded as a negative occurrence and the occurrences happen when the project is not efficiently defined, documented or controlled. The scope of the project usually increases when new product or new features has been added to the current projects without corresponding addition in resources, time and budget; and as a result of the undesired changes in the project scope, the team drifts away from its original objective and scope into unintended additions (“Project scope management”). Project scope management This creates a situation where the scope of the project increases and more tasks are to be accomplished within the limited time and budget that was originally planned for lesser tasks. So, the scope creep puts the project group into overturning the original project time and budget. Project managers are affected by the impacts of the scope creep since the beginning the project management. Controlling the scope creep is a hard task to be completed and requires precisely defined and documented design. The project manger is badly concerned about the project creep as it can sneak up, morph, and destroy a project. However, the term “scope creep” is not applied when the budget and time of the project is increased in accordance with the changes in the scope, and it is an accepted addition to the scope of the project. 2.0. “We cannot afford to terminate the project now. We have already spent more than 50 percent of the project budget.” The organization has changed its managerial priorities and therefore the project no longer supports the administrative strategies and the project needs to be terminated. The above statement reveals that 50 percent of the project budget is completed. However the costs to the time of the audit of the completed tasks are sunk costs. The decision over whether to continue with the project or to shut down depends on the estimation of future costs of the project and its benefits thereafter. A wise project manager needs to make a right decision by efficiently speculating the future of the project. 3.0 The role of Project Retrospective. It’s difference from Post-project evaluation. Project Retrospective is a technique to evaluate from the project experience, taking both good and bad of the project into consideration. The primary role of the project retrospective is to discover lessons and to make improvements in process that facilitates planning and execution on future projects. Such discovery is carried by brining up significant positive and negative issues, the basic causes for the issues and suggestions and proposals for improvement, normally accomplished through a retrospective meeting. The Project Retrospective further analyzes the tasks that were successful and also whether to continue with those activities. The analysis includes the functions that were useful and how they could be improved, which decision was wrong that we should not repeat, and about the cause behind the success or failure of an undertaking, and what the team can do about it. On the other hand, Post-project evaluation is a method of recording the experiences from the past projects for the purpose using those data in the future projects wherever it seems to influence the project. The purpose of the Post-project evaluation is to assist the non-specialists in the project management in dealing with the future decision making. This system will make sure that mistakes are not repeated and the good practices of the management are maintained. In contrast to the project retrospective, the post-project evaluation is prepared with the main objective of learning the lessons that can be applied to the future projects or to transfer to departmental projects and improves project appraisal design, management, and implementation. 4.0 Major deliverables for project closure The objective of project closure is to complete current project and to improve the performance of upcoming projects. Management of the closure phase of the projects has the same importance as any other phase has. On analyzing various organizations we find that those organizations which manage closure and review have greater chances to prosper. And those which do not meet up the review are seen to repeat the same mistakes forever. The execution of closure has three major deliverables – (i) wrap-up, (ii) evaluation, and (iii) retrospectives. (i) Wrap-up: - Wrapping up of the closure activity includes the delivery of the final project deliverables including closing accounts, finding new opportunities for the project staff, closing facilities, and creating a final report (“Project closure”). The important wrap up task is to make sure that the project is approved and accepted by the customer. (ii) Evaluation: - The project evaluation is the second deliverable where verification and documentation of the project performance is carried out. The evaluation of the project consists of team, individual team members, and project manger performance. The suppliers and customers contribute to the external input of the evaluation. Evaluation of the major aspects of the project facilitates with important information for the future reference. (iii) Retrospective: - The retrospective techniques aim at the identification and learning of the lessons from within the project. Often firms face with the issue of huge amount of dollars spend on planning the project and doing little in learning anything from the experience of completing the project. The lack of adequate review, assessment, and recording successes and failure of the project is regarded to be a costly waste. (2) The retrospective techniques meet the issues of such wastes. Retrospectives of lessons realized are intended to enhance the performance on current as well as future projects, levying the responsibility on an independent facilitator who contributes major inputs to the closure report that consists of the lessons learned. 5.0 Preparation for an international project The preparation for and international project should be done with a sufficient amount of cross-cultured guidance before going to take up the project. The methods and amount of training on the cross culture normally depend on the two factors: (i) how long the person is needed to stay in the foreign culture and (ii) the degree of unfamiliarity or say how “foreign” the culture is. The training process on the foreign culture should consist of language, dress codes, religion, social etiquettes, and business protocols. Knowledge in the education systems and family life and the food and eating behaviors makes the person ample enough to deal with almost all situations in the foreign land. Various methods and techniques can be used for preparation, such as videos, books, and seminars to make out more about the abroad social and cultural situations where the individual is going to mingle in. There are many international organizations which provide training facility to those who are interested. There are many campuses that hold inter-culture organizations and coffee houses that facilitates in cross-country events for student participation. All these programs provide a perspective of visiting the country. 6.0 Earned Value Management ‘Planned Value (PV), Actual Cost (AC), and Earned Value (EV)’ are the three important basic entities used to evaluate the status of project in the Earned Value Management (“Earned value”). The project health must be evaluated frequently considering the important factors of the project such as, size and complexity of the project, risks, chances for development, and the duration of the project. For example, the EV assessment should be done weekly or monthly for small projects having shorter schedule. The methodology is to select a frequency that enables the efficient assessment of the schedule and cost issues in time so that there gets the chance to resolve any potential problems. Calculation of Cost Variance and Schedule Variance Cost Variance (CV) = EV – AC Schedule Variance (SV) = EV – PV Here, we are given that, PV = $240, EV = $230, AC = $250. Therefore, using the above formulas we get, CV = -$20 and SV = -$10 It can be depicted in using a diagram as follows: From the above illustration we find that, a positive variance normally portrays that the project is doing better than the expected efficiency and a negative variance means that the project is below the expected levels. The above figure obtained from the project shows that the CV is -$20, which means the project is running below the expected levels. In the same way the SV is -$10 which too shows that the project is running in an undesired phase and will be facing great danger soon. These figures point out that the project is facing an unhealthy situation that soon needed to be addressed. The project manager should investigate the reason behind the negative variance and should be able to explain the causes for the under-running of the project. The Earned Value Management facilitates the project management in obtaining an early warning signal about the status of the project that may be in trouble. The negative variance of the project is often caused by the insufficient funding, lack of proper management, and scope creep. The EVM can be used only to detect the variance and therefore it alone cannot resolve the issues. At this juncture there comes the need for an efficient project manager. Projects managers are faced with more issues concerned with production of hardware involving procedures like units intended and units produced. However, the Earned Value can be detected easily as each unit can be attributed a value which in turn makes it a simple job of counting to obtain the EV at any phase of the project. The challenge in using the methodology is to split the scope of work into basic elements that can be apportioned to the total budget. The accuracy of the task decides the effectiveness of the Earned Value Management in evaluating the phase of the project and alerting the project management about the potential cost and schedule issues. Works Cited “Earned value.” Clarity Inc. (n.d). Web. 10 Aug 2011. “Project scope management.” Zainbooks.com. (n.d). Web. 10 Aug 2011 “Project closure.” Project Management: The Managerial Process. McGraw- Hill Higher Education. (n.d). Web. 10 Aug 2011. Read More