Three techniques to prevent scope creep

Have you ever started a project thinking you have a firm price and then at the end and say, "How'd this get so over budget"?

That's typically the lagging indicator of scope creep, and at that point,  it's too late to undo the damage caused to your budget or schedule.  In this episode, I give you three techniques to protect your project from the creeping monster. 

Transcript

Omar (00:00):

Okay. Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of the Omar project. But before we get started, I want to make sure I invite you to join the Omar project.com. That's spelled O M a R because you can get a lot of great insight on project management, the skills you need to up your game, and also learn from the best project managers in the world. On the most complex projects

Omar (00:30):

Today, we'll talk about scope creep and often misunderstood concepts in project

Omar (00:35):

Management and leading teams. It's when things start to happen that go beyond the original scope that you agreed to. We're going to talk about how to prevent it. What do you do when your management asks you to do something that's obviously creating scope creep and then how can you complete it successfully without ruining your entire project? All right, let's get started. Now. Scope creep to me is a really interesting subject because when you first hear it, you're like, what the hell is scope creep? It sounds strange for something that's business professional, but it's truly, it's the creep over the line of what you agreed to. So think about it as in you have a handshake with somebody and you say, Hey, we're going to build this house and it's going to be white colored paint, and we're not going to put a deck on it.

Omar (01:19):

And then you and your partner are talking and you're seeing the house get built and you look at it and you're like, wow, this house would be amazing if we just added a deck to it. And you're like, you know what? Let's put that deck on there. And what happens when you put that deck is you start this process called scope creep. It starts to build up with small increases that end up being more expensive, add complexity, adds scope to your project, which is why it's called scope creep. And it happens just like, I think creep is the perfect word for it. It's usually tiny things. It's usually, oh, let's upgrade the bathroom. Let's put a deck, oh, you know what? We should do this. And let's upgrade this bathroom type installation or these mirrors or whatever you're doing. And it's small little upgrades like that, or changes to your original plan.

Omar (02:11):

That all of a sudden you'll go back and you'll end up looking at what the architecture and the builders just charging you. And you're like, whoa, where did this come from? How did it get from this much money to all of a sudden it's this price? And that's exactly what scope creep is. And that's exactly the way it happens in a professional setting. So let's talk about the first thing you're going to need to do. If you're sitting in and you're managing projects for the first time, or you haven't had that project yet, where you've had to deal with this, the first thing and the most important thing is to try and prevent it. This is like the plague. Once you start letting it happen in your project, it can overtake it very quickly and it happens slow. Hey, John, from across the hall is asking you to build that extra platform within different type of metallurgy, just because it's a little bit better and he's worried about corrosion or something else, but maybe there's not a real reason to do that.

Omar (03:01):

It's just a fundamental concern that really is baseless. These are the things that you, as a project manager, as a leader, will have to stop and say, Hey, do we really need, this? Is this really critical? The reason it's so important is because you've already at this point, if it's scope creep, it's because you've already established what your baseline cost is going to be. It means you've gone to your management. You've said, I think this project is going to cost this amount. And here's a percentage of window that I think I can hit within that. You've said that on your costs. And you've said that with your schedule and both of those are intertwined. So if somebody comes in from different departments and they start adding scope to what you already own, guess what? That's not going to get done in the same amount of time.

Omar (03:43):

That takes more time, or it may take more people or may take more expertise that you do not have currently. So scope creeps should always be thought of as adding money, think a dollar signs, huge dollar signs. When you see people ask you things to add. Now, here's the thing. It's what happens when you get it from your management. Now, this is a very common thing. Just like we talked about that house example, or some people might be looking at the house and realize, man, we really should put a deck out there. You would look them not a lot nicer. And it would actually add to the house and it would be more functional or, you know what, let's add a garage. Those types of things happen with your own projects, say you're building software and you do the whole platform and you build it out.

Omar (04:25):

And you're like, you know what? We really need to add this one feature. And it's your boss. And they come to you and they're like, you need to put this into your software product. Well, here's the thing. This is what a lot of people get stuck on. Okay. Really take this to heart. If you're a project lead and you're owning your schedule and your budget, you have to analyze the impact of that. Ask, even if it's from your boss, because what they might not realize is sometimes they're asking you, Hey, go ahead and add that. And I'm also going to expect you to finish at the exact cost and the exact schedule that you told me prior to me adding that, which means they're not incorporating what the impacts of this new scope creep are doing to your project. It's super critical that you go back and understand exactly what's happening with that.

Omar (05:08):

That means you're going to have to calculate there's any schedule slip. What's the cost increase. What type of delays will you have on your project? And maybe what type of skills or expertise you might have to bring on. And then maybe people stay on the project longer. So I'll give you an example here, because I'm very familiar with scope creep based on a lot of the jobs that I've done. Sometimes you'll get upper level managers come in and they have a different business plan. So they're looking at your project. They're building, whatever was, in my case, it was all platforms. In other cases, it could be a manufacturing facility and they realize that, Hey, we have a different need in the business. We already building a facility over here. Why can't we just add it to that one? And that's a great question, right? It's always less expensive to build onto something that's about to get built and then building a new facility, a duplicate.

Omar (05:57):

So they may ask, Hey, can we do this in your facility? That is a total legitimate question. And it will happen to you if you're in project management long enough, but it doesn't mean that the due diligence for figuring out what the impact is doesn't need to happen. So the first thing is, understand all your impacts on how it's going to work. And then you can come back and say, Hey, yes, we can do this, but here's the thing I'm going to have to delay the end date of the overall project. And it's also going to cost you X amount more and then let them agree to that before you go. And I really encourage you to get that actually in writing, because if it's scope creep, it truly means that you really agree to. You've made a contract that you're going to finish on a certain date and budget, and this is changing that contract.

Omar (06:42):

So you need to make this contractual. You need to treat this like a contract addendum and it should be so update your contract. If you have to update your design documents, update your summary of what you're doing and all of that should be signed off by your leadership team to say, Hey, look guys, Hey, Hey, look, I'm doing exactly what you guys wanted me to do, but here here's the thing. You guys are going to spend a little bit more money. It's gonna take longer and here's sign us off. So that's definitely something that needs to happen now, how to complete these things successfully. I've kind of spelled that out. Number one is always look at the impact because you have to understand it, communicate the impact to the stakeholders that are important, especially if they're getting requested from them. Sometimes it's saying no to those stakeholders, just because your manager's telling you, you know, you should think about that, the right answer.

Omar (07:28):

Maybe be like, Hey, no, I can't do that. I don't have the right team. I don't have the expertise. We can't do that. I think it would cause a project to fail. If you're being asked to do something that where you truly believe it would cause the project to fail, then you have to flag that you will be the only person that can champion that you are the only person that might have that visibility to what's going on. So you have to actually push and say, look, I can't do this because I think this would make the project fail. And then that's where the discussion goes up to your management chain and they can make those decisions being successful with scope creep is just as much about communication as it is with managing the actual impacts of the things. There's one last bit. I'll tell you about scope creep and it's the things that often could be overlooked that can ruin your project.

Omar (08:14):

The reason scope creeps so dangerous is that with scope creep, with every addition, it's usually happening after the fact after things have already been designed after things have already started construction after things are already starting to get commission, which means the flow of how you're doing these are falling outside of the normal operation of how you would do a project. And because the normal operation of a project has a lot of checks and balances along the way. You may miss some of those checks and balances with whatever you're adding to it. So say let's give an example of an oil platform. We've decided to add a separate unit in that system, like a whole different processing unit. Well, if we're doing that after the fact, then that kicks off a lot of work that normally would be done all at once, where you're looking at all of the units, all of the trains and how they interact together.

Omar (09:08):

Now you'll have to do a separate, a review, a design review, and a separate safety review. That's looking at how that specific unit that you're now designing operates and interfaces with all the other units. And although it's going to be thorough, there's the potential of missing something because you don't have the same people in the room. Some people have left the project. You may not have the same experts that facilitated it. So there's always this, this risk that's subtle, but it does exist of missing something with scope creep. And it's something you need to be very cautious of when you do a say, yes, I'm going to do that. I'll take this on. That's all I've got. Let me know any stories you've had with scope creep.

Omar (09:49):

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you'd like to hear more, you can join us@theomarproject.com. That's O M a R. We have a lot more information on project management, technical skills on the leadership. And also you can hear from more of the top experts in the field.