Scope creep

Scope creep:

Uncontrolled changes to the scope due to interference from stakeholders or due to misunderstanding from the project team.

Reasons for project failure:

1. Improper requirement gathering from customer:

Requirement gathering and planning is very essential and important part of the project. This also includes the study of internal and external factor which is essential for project success.BA plays very crucial role along with customer in gathering project requirement which gives each and every specific details of the project which align with the business requirement. Improper requirement gathering leads to scope creep, over budget, code rework, poor design and functionality.

2. Continuous change in requirement:

Changes in the shared requirement in middle of the project lifecycle is very major problem in IT projects. At beginning of the project, sometime client don’t have the clear idea about the requirement and may come up with better idea afterwards. For stakeholders also, Lack of understanding in project requirement and functionality of system often leads to changes in project scope. To implement the changes requires certain amount of rework and budget. Often changes in project requirement can become uncontrolled and unmanaged which leads to project failure.

3. Lack of user involvement:

Lack of user involvement in IT projects can lead the project to miss or poorly defined requirements. Customer or Customer representative should actively participate in the project and communicate with the team. This helps project team to get more clarity of the functionality of project.

4. Lack of executive support:

If you don’t define the major characteristics of a project up front, it’s very common to have differences in expectations among the major stakeholders. This is true even if you take all of your initial direction from the sponsor. As a project gets larger, even the sponsor may not have a complete picture of what needs to happen for the project to be successful. Other times, the sponsor has a vision, but there are other visions that may be better or more viable. These competing ideas end up surfacing later in the project, causing confusion and rework

5. Unrealistic expectation:

Project with unrealistic expectation, schedule or timeline can destroy projects. It is very important to have a clear idea of what our team can accomplish and in what time frame. Once you aligned expectation with reality, you must communicate them to customer and stakeholders.

6. Improper planning:

Without basic planning, your project can fall behind the schedule. In addition to missing the deadline, you will experience budget overruns, and if your project doesn’t reach the market on time, the business can miss opportunities, lose customers, and see sales decline.

It is not necessary to plan your project in great detail, it can actually be counterproductive, but it is essential to define the deadlines for each stage of the project. Systematically provide the room for flexibility in the event of unforeseen events, it is better to plan longer and finish early than the other way around.

Preventive Measures to avoid scope creep:

1. We have to ensure that we gather proper requirements from the customer. We need to have a discussion with Project Stakeholders regarding the gathered requirement to finalize the project scope and Project duration before taking sign off from the customer.
2. We have to ensure that we are discussing the requirement in detail with the customer, so the development team can develop the application according to Requirement Document and there should not be any frequent change requests.
3. We have to ensure that the Customer is nominating one of their executives as a Project SPOC who should be involved in all project phases and authorized to sign off each phase after UAT.
4. We have to ensure that we are sharing the Requirement document with the Project Manager and concerned management authorities to finalize the project requirement and Budget approval.
5. We have to ensure that whatever requirement and timeline the customer is sharing are practical and validated by the Project team before signing off from the Customer.
6. We have to ensure that we are coordinating with Project Team and Customer in Every project phase by conducting short Weekly Review calls to ensure that we are achieving milestones as per the road map design during the planning phase of a project.