Will Project Creep Cost You Or Create Value
Will Project Creep Cost You—or Create Value?
Strict rules that limit a project’s scope can be the key to its success.
But you need a system flexible enough to recognize value. by Loren Gary
I
of a manager’s existence: When do you permit changes to a major project?
Allow the wrong changes and the project you’re responsible for can veer off course, run over budget, and miss key deadlines. Ignore the right change, and you fail to capitalize on a major market opportunity.
Hence the dilemma: How to stay open to making midstream changes that promise to improve your project’s outcome without succumbing to the dangers of “creep,” in which small scope changes add up to irremediable budgetor schedule-busting modifications?
The answer lies in recognizing that while each project has its own unique characteristics, you do not need to bring a unique perspective to each project you manage. “If
T’S A QUESTION THAT CAN BE THE BANE
A TALE OF TWO PROJECTS
When Dave Moffatt was overseeing the construction of five supermarkets for Jewel Companies back in the
1970s, work came to a halt in the middle of construction while plans were redrawn to incorporate flower shops into the supermarkets—a very new concept at the time. What justified the lost time and added expense? The vice president of marketing’s ROI analysis showing that these costs would be more than offset by the revenue the flower shops would bring in.
Midcourse scope adjustments to accommodate new realities or incorporate new capabilities can pay off‚— but only when they’re done very intentionally and with a hard-nosed insistence on demonstrating up front where the money is going to come from. Such vigilance doesn’t just happen, which is why for every story like Moffatt’s, there’s probably three or four that speak to the dangers of creep.
Need an example? Think of the Big Dig, the highway project to put Boston’s central artery underground, in which scope changes were all too casually agreed to when they were noticed at all.
Strict rules that limit a project’s scope can be the key to its success.
But you need a system flexible enough to recognize value. by Loren Gary
I
of a manager’s existence: When do you permit changes to a major project?
Allow the wrong changes and the project you’re responsible for can veer off course, run over budget, and miss key deadlines. Ignore the right change, and you fail to capitalize on a major market opportunity.
Hence the dilemma: How to stay open to making midstream changes that promise to improve your project’s outcome without succumbing to the dangers of “creep,” in which small scope changes add up to irremediable budgetor schedule-busting modifications?
The answer lies in recognizing that while each project has its own unique characteristics, you do not need to bring a unique perspective to each project you manage. “If
T’S A QUESTION THAT CAN BE THE BANE
A TALE OF TWO PROJECTS
When Dave Moffatt was overseeing the construction of five supermarkets for Jewel Companies back in the
1970s, work came to a halt in the middle of construction while plans were redrawn to incorporate flower shops into the supermarkets—a very new concept at the time. What justified the lost time and added expense? The vice president of marketing’s ROI analysis showing that these costs would be more than offset by the revenue the flower shops would bring in.
Midcourse scope adjustments to accommodate new realities or incorporate new capabilities can pay off‚— but only when they’re done very intentionally and with a hard-nosed insistence on demonstrating up front where the money is going to come from. Such vigilance doesn’t just happen, which is why for every story like Moffatt’s, there’s probably three or four that speak to the dangers of creep.
Need an example? Think of the Big Dig, the highway project to put Boston’s central artery underground, in which scope changes were all too casually agreed to when they were noticed at all.