Page 97 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Summer Stings. How To Treat IT Project Management Pain Points

I was sat in the pub beer garden at the weekend when a
customer was stung by a wasp. A passing waitress saw
this and instantly she returned with ice, cotton wool,
some apple cider vinegar and an EpiPen (just in case).
Now, I've treated wasp stings with calamine lotion in
the past, and I have applied an ice-cold compress, but
the apple cider vinegar was a new one on me.
Within seconds, the swelling had gone down and the
stung customer was back enjoying his pint.
I asked the waitress where the idea for apple cider
vinegar had come from and she just smiled and said,
"Life experience."
IT Projects are like this pub beer garden. One minute you're sat enjoying the peace and calm and the
next you feel a seemingly unprovoked sting as if from nowhere, that leaves you in agony. Knowing
how to treat these IT Project pain points is equally down to life experience - sometimes you need
help from a passing waitress or in this case, a great IT Project blog.
Five IT Project Stings and How to Make Treat Them

1) The Sting: Scope Creep

You have the work planned out, resources allocated, everyone knows what they're doing and when
and then ... the client changes the requirement or thinks of something that "it would be nice if" your
project could deliver. It's really common for client requirements to change and with your "can do"
attitude you will try to accommodate. The sting here isn't just the extra work that you will have to fit
in, you have to take time to properly understand the client's changed need and then reassess
resources, decide who will complete which tasks and communicate all this with your team.

The Treatment:
From the start, define, agree and then stick to a scope change approval process. Make sure that
there is an understanding that mid-lifecycle changes will also probably lead to changes to cost and
timings. When a change is requested, detail all the requirements that have changed, list everything
that the client has requested and communicate to your client how these changes will affect the
scope, cost and delivery date of the project. You can also set and agree response levels based on
time and cost, effectively approval filters for requests, so easily accommodated changes can be
actioned by without senior approval whereas changes that need extra cost, resources or time must
be passed to a senior project leader for approval.

Pre-agreed parameters take the awkwardness out of any change request. Thorough cataloguing
gives you and your project stakeholders a quick reference point to check and communicate scope
change.