You're facing scope changes in a systems design project. How will you secure the additional resources needed?

I agree with the points made. As mentioned scope creep is very common. One of the challenges faced is the frequency of changes requested. It becomes a problem stopping work and asking for a cost increase every time. It causes delays navigating the beauracracy especially if it's a large organization. There's the added issue of being continuously in an uncomfortable position of negotiations

While accessing the impact of scope changes, I will focus on : Understand the Changes: Clearly define what the scope change entails—new features, additional requirements, or changes in existing functionality. Evaluate the Impact :- Timeline Impact: Understand how the scope change affects the project deadlines, possibly leading to an extension. Cost Impact: Calculate the increase in costs due to additional resources, extended timelines, or changes in scope. Quality Impact: Assess whether the scope change will impact the quality of the deliverables, either positively (through added features) or negatively (through rushed implementation). Risk Impact: Identify new risks introduced by the scope change and plan for their mitigation.

When facing scope changes in a systems design project, the first step is to conduct a comprehensive impact analysis. This will help you determine how the changes will affect your existing resources, timelines, and budget. Reviewing the project's new requirements thoroughly, consulting with your team, and engaging stakeholders are essential actions to fully understand the demands imposed by these changes. With a detailed assessment, you can identify exactly what additional resources are needed—be it more personnel, increased budget, or extended deadlines. Armed with this information, you can then strategically approach securing the necessary resources to successfully adapt and meet the expanded project scope.

Securing additional resources for scope changes in a systems design project involves re-assesment and -re-estimation of the scope. Assess the Impact, Clearly define how the scope changes affect the project timeline, budget, and resource requirements. Negotiate with clients to secure the needed resources and budget. Consider alternative solutions like outsourcing or using temporary contractors if internal resources are limited. Documentation: Document all scope changes and approved resource adjustments to maintain transparency and accountability. Monitoring and Adjustments: Once resources are secured, monitor their usage closely to ensure they are effectively contributing to the project’s revised objectives.

The effective way to talk to the stakeholders is to translate the technical part of the scope change to the business impact it carries. Stakeholders are interested in high-level and business justifications, and having a clear picture of the change and it's affect in the real world would harness their support to help you.

Stake holder engagement is essential to understand the impact of scope changes holistically. We should get first hand information of what the scope creep is calling for what are the risks implementing them. The impact analysis may have the details high level assessment but by engaging the stakeholders program should understand the impact in detail not to limit at high level. For example teams will have implementation issues either due to lack of skill/ resource, dependencies within team, dependencies from external suppliers, requirement of new tools etc.. So program should engage stakeholders and document and summarize the impact with implications, these summary will help management to make quick decisions.

One thing that's important to keep in mind is that a project can't be done without stakeholders. And among all the people in the project, it's important to communicate with your sponsor. Indeed, the sponsor is the one who will help you defend the changes in scope and/or resources. You must therefore pay particular attention to communication with your sponsor. Then you also need to get the other stakeholders on board by taking the time to explain why you need additional resources. Thus, when the time comes for your management's questions, all stakeholders will talk about one way: it will be easier to convince.

Scope changes often lead to additional budget. Budget increase may be either due to additional effort, additional tools requirement, requirement for new resource with a niche skill. By analyzing the overall budget program team can optimize the costs. Budget revisit will give a bird eye view for the entire program and provides an opportunity for the program team on how they can leverage the costs like example, tools and licensees can be borrowed from other teams, Or piece of hardware, sw/code can be reuse from other program.

While assessing the risks, not compromising on Quality, good negotiating skills etc are absolutely important and vital, one aspect that many tend to forget is about the employees- in our haste to support the customer many overlooked the fact that our employees are major stakeholders and consulting them is extremely important before key decision on the approach is taken. The well being of our employees (both physical and mental) should be paramount and not just the customer need.

Timeline negotiation with stakeholders is challenging task, reason being each stakeholder has their prospective. For customer schedule, timelines and quality are critical. To meet the schedules speed is the key for project execution. Internal teams dependencies to be addressed. To steadfast the execution, timeline negotiation with internal and external stakeholders is essential. Negotiation to be done team once they have done the groundwork by weighing the different implementation plans, associated risks involved against the time plan without compromising on the product quality. Program should consider the optimal execution with priorities set appropriately.

Sometimes scope creep happens due to issues in project planning. Sure, the business could have suddenly shifted to where the new thing is critical, but I believe most times it's because the thing that was asked for wasn't really thought out and vetted as what was needed and only over time was it found out what was actually the value in the project. Too many times we think we need to build the jungle only to find out later we just wanted a banana.