Everybody who has ever had anything to do with project management knows ´scope creep´. Unfortunately, scope is not the only thing that can creep up.

Scope creep

Usually, scope creep occurs if specifications are unclear. In normal life one often does not get the time and/or budget for proper Work Package Descriptions, let alone extensive requirement engineering, and halfway down the project you find out that the user sees certain concepts much more extensive as the supplier. We “all” have grown to see that and deal with it.

In addition, within larger corporations we often see that out of the blue certain corporate requirements are imposed: that new system or methodology that has been developed in some remote corner of the world but is supposed to become the new corporate standard needs to be used by all new projects as well, of course. That this explodes your project budget and heaps all kinds of teething problems on top of existing changes is something that you can easily tackle with your extensive project staff, of course.

Date creep

A typical case in high pressure international projects is that some project members suddenly are not available: illness is one, but either children need to go to the hospital urgently, technical difficulties prevent dialing into a conference call or make a hearing – let alone understanding – one another virtually impossible, e-mails are not answered for unclear reasons, or have unexplained IT delays, and suddenly the month of preparation has shrunk to 2 weeks.

Another typical example in this category is the ‘harmonica’: the first three intermediate steps suddenly are extended by 50% in duration, while the last three intermediate steps are decreased by the same amount. “No problem” is the first reaction, “the final deadline remains the same.” However, there was a reason that those last steps were expected to take that long, it is a telltale sign that you are only postponing the confrontation: the delay is just waiting for you, and after these first three steps have been completed, you suddenly are confronted with the statement that the remaining planning really is not realistic any more. It needs to be re-done, but now realistically. The good thing is that you do learn quite a number of great excuses in the process.

Budget creep

Since we have so many “Controllers” in Finance, budgets of course are much better under control. Unclear accounting practices never lead to sudden and unannounced budgetary charges, like expenses that have first been charged to another budget – so also without your proper authorization – and are then passed on, in the worst case with an additional cost handling surcharge

Another variant is all kinds of staff departments making expenditures for what they deem fit – with the same proper authorizations, of course – which are then passed on via an overhead charge. Most of these charges never get properly checked anyway and are considered as avoidable as ‘rain from above’. Fortunately, these charges are then generally not traceable to your project which saves your reputation.

All of these are nothing compared to organizations “giving responsibility without authority” whereby costs are charged to a cost account without the proper approval of the person responsible for the cost account.

Obfuscation

Finally, there are creeps of the combined sort, like project members who want to halfway change to a different kind of naming of work packages, which makes an audit trail virtually impossible. The same applies to project members that suddenly do not remember the meaning of certain work packages, or in the worst case suddenly distance themselves of the sensibleness of these work packages that they themselves have approved earlier on. The only question remains what creeps here: the scope, time or budget milestones, or maybe something else…

 (Originally posted February 11, 2015)