Question

What is project creep? Which system development methods are more prone to project creep? What could be a strategy to avoid it? (400 words approx.)

Answer 1

Answer:-----------

Scope creep is the change or growth of project scope or it refers to how a project’s requirements tend to increase over a project life-cycle.

Strategy to avoid from scope creep:-------------

1. Document the Requirements
The single most important thing to avoid scope creep on your project is to document your requirements.

• Talk to all the project stakeholders and users to work out exactly what they want from the project.
• Write it down.
• Manage conflicts.
• Capture all the requirements in a document.
• Share that document online so everyone can easily see it.

2. Set up Change Control Processes
A change control process is very straightforward. Essentially, someone suggests a change, it is reviewed, approved or rejected and if it is approved, then incorporated into the project plan. If your project management software has change management functionality, use that.Setting up the process for your project means thinking about who is going to review and approve changes. Without a process, change merely… happens.

3. Create a Clear Project Schedule
Use your requirements to create a detailed task list. The project schedule is the result of knowing what your project will deliver; it should show all the requirements and how they will be achieved, in the form of tasks and activities.
As noted above, change does happen. It only impacts a project negatively if it was
a) never planned for
or
b) allowed to creep in.

4. Verify the Scope with the Stakeholders
It’s important to check that you have properly understood the requirements. What you think the project sponsor means might not be what he or she meant. Often people talk at cross purposes without realizing it.

You can use discussions to talk to your sponsor and stakeholders about the change control process.

Explain :---

• how you will manage changes on the project
• what approval you will need from them in order to proceed.

5. Engage the Project Team
Sometimes project team members want to be helpful and will agree to change something without applying the formal process. Explain that they cannot say yes to changes without the change being approved. If they want to help a stakeholder, the best thing to do is to explain the process and offer to help with documenting the change.

Scope creep is a real problem on projects, especially when the team and the stakeholders don’t understand the impact that changes can have on the resources, the budget and the schedule. Fortunately, it does not need to be a major issue if you are clear about the initial project scope and you carefully manage changes during the life-cycle of your project.