How Scope Creep Affects Team Performance
When your team has a project it is so easy to get excited and want to expand and explore as you look at possibilities. Sometimes, if you are working with a client, the project might expand beyond your ideas, sometimes things get a little out of control.
The scope of your project can easily and quickly and sneakily expand beyond what you originally imagined and turn into a monster of an undertaking --- and that reminds me of one of the greatest scope creeps I've experienced on a project that nearly resulted in death.
Every year, my dad and I partake in a long-distance bike race called Tulsa Tough. Tulsa Tough is one of the top cycling events in the nation. It's a three-day tournament of craziness and fun. My dad and I are not by any stretch of the imagination professional bikers. We are the most amateur bikers around. In fact, our first race I did on a mountain bike and my dad did on a 1970's bike that was rescued from the garbage. We've improved our equipment since then but retain our amateur status.
Two years ago, my dad and I were in the midst of a 65 miles race and we decided at about mile 50 that we were feeling good. In fact we were feeling really good. Our legs were fresh, the weather was nice, we were making good time, we were enjoying ourselves and we didn't want the day to end in 15 short miles. It was at that point we decided to change course and join the full 100 miles race.
We made it past the mile 65 - feeling great. Mile 75- tired but going strong. Then, about mile 80, we made a wrong turn. Thing was, we began following the Sunday trail on Saturday - meaning we were still following signs and thinking that we were going in the right direction. It wasn't until we were about mile 100 and nowhere near a finish line that we got a little worried. The sun had come up and the June Oklahoma heat was blasting on us. We had prepared for two more rest stops and had depleted our supplies of food and water. We were in the farm country of Oklahoma without a soul in sight.
We saw the skyscraper of downtown and thought we could make it, but as we made it over yet another hill I looked back and saw that my dad had stopped sweating and was pale white. We called the event medical attention that brought us through the finish line and straight to an IV.
This chill father-daughter experience soon turned very scary. We both had suffered from heat exhaustion, dehydration, and even though I had put on a copious amount of sunscreen I was very burnt. None of this would have happened if we would have stuck to our plan of 65 miles.
Scope creep probably won't end you up on an IV...at least I hope not. But here are a few things that you can do to avoid scope creep in your teams.
First, define your scope. Define what is and is not included in your project. Your defined SOW (scope of work) contains the milestones, reports, deliverables, and end products that are expected within the project. You won't know if you have gone outside of the scope if you haven't defined it in the first place. Our team (my dad and I) defined our scope to be a 65-mile race, we knew that we were going to have 5 stops within the race about every 10-20 miles.
Then, complete estimations within your scope. While there is a slew of various ways to complete estimations from bucket list to story points, the important thing is that you understand what you are estimating. Estimate the expected timeline, resources needed, plan for delays and bugs, and manpower estimated. Estimations help to set realistic expectations. In Tulsa Tough, we estimated how much sunscreen, water, and snacks were needed. I estimated how much energy I would need to exert in a certain time period so that I could set a sustainable pace.
Also, have an agreed-upon process to change or alter the scope. Sometimes, the scope of your project might have a situation in which the scope can be altered or adjusted - that is totally fine! Understand that there is a difference between being agile and being frivolous in your scope alterations. Adding extra mileage due to road closure -- that is being agile. Adding extra mileage because we felt like it at the moment -- that could be categorized as frivolous. Have a process that allows you to ask questions to identify if the scope change is necessary.
Additionally, recognize that it is okay to place additives aside for a different project. It's not that my dad and I couldn't race 100 miles. We could have -- and we technically did bike 100 miles. However, it would have probably been a better experience if we would have waited until we had the preparation, training, resources, and expectations. This was an entirely different undertaking that should have been tackled at a different time. Understand that it's totally okay to place your additives and alterations in a sort of backlog to tackle at a different time.
The next year and every year past we have stayed within our agreed-upon project scope. We estimate our time, stops, snacks, water, sunscreen, and ride time. We have a process for change. Meaning, don't randomly add 35 extra miles last minute. I might race 100 miles in the future, but that is a project for a different time. Team performance is dramatically affected by scope creep. The good thing is, you have the power to protect the scope of your project and stay away for IV warranted situatio
