News & Views

November 11, 2009 from ProjectTimes – “…Unfortunately, most scope-management frameworks are designed around the definition of a finite scope based on limited knowledge and advocating tight controls to manage change. Scope changes can be driven by many factors, including new ideas, regulatory change, change of needs, poor understanding of requirements, heuristic discoveries, financial circumstances, changes in leadership and more. In addition, in the absence of an agreed-upon objective and quantitative methods, assessing the impact that scope changes will have on the success of the project, emotions and politics will most likely rule the day…

A mature management will want to approach projects in such a way that the remaining time to complete and monies that need to be spent, reflect the most accurate possible appraisal of reality. However, in most cases management wants to cast early estimates in concrete and threaten grave punishment to the project manager should they miss budgetary and delivery date targets. This in turn often incents those leading the project to lie about progress, representing to management that the project-amazingly–is as complete as the monies that have been spent. The old adage that “project progress can be declared on track right up to the remaining 10 percent of the effort” has roots in this contradiction–and management’s stupidity in such matters…”

180 View – This article contains some useful suggestions including “A more mature and sane approach to managing projects is to recognize from the beginning that events can occur that could substantially impact the project’s budget and delivery date. Based on this analysis, a set of planned recalibrations can be forecast, along with the trigger points that would indicate a change in scope was needed. Being proactive in this regard is the key to being intelligent about true scope management.” The trick is to obtain estimates for time and costs to complete the project. The variance should be calculated as Budget – (Actual + Estimated Cost to Complete). Another recommendation (“Time boxing” is a well-accepted method for chunking deliverables into a series of smaller groups”) is a way to find out early whether there are problems rather than wait for everything to be ready at the same time.