Analyzing Scope Creep

Prior to moving to my present school I was the principal of small rural primary school. The school lacked space and had no room for expansion. The board of management deliberated on the way forward for months.  Meanwhile I went around and found out all the individuals who owned land in the community and requested that they donate, least or sell land to the school. One man donated two acres of land to build a school. Then the board of management began making plans to build a school.

 A goal and concept definition was created. A market research was carried out. The financial cost and project strategy was developed. The project charter was then approved. Suddenly the Government at that time came up with a plan to build an international airport. The land for the school fell within the parameters of that proposed airport. The officials sat with the team and a negotiation was made with the government. Instead of paying for the two acres of land the school was donated five acres of land in a better location for the school building. The whole dynamics of the project was changed.

The change of location also brought with it the desire to merge my school with another small rural school. Hence there was a scope creep. In fact a new project was developed. A steering committee was developed and from that a project team and was formulated. This team brought in more technical experts and skilled personals. A new budget was made. A sense of urgency was created. The project developed speed and within two years the school was built.

The stakeholders managed the issues which came about as a result of the change quite effectively. Everyone supported the change and gave their commitment to work with the new project plans. Had I been the project manager the only thing I would have done differently was to negotiate for a better plant model and give it a more modern appearance. In the capacity that I served I tried to influence the team to do so but was not successful. Honestly up to this day individuals are still complaining about this lack of vision.

Estimating Cost and Allocating Resources

Greer’s Michael (2009) in his web published article, “Estimating Instructional Development time,” identified a few things that are necessary when estimating time for an instructional development project. First he warns that the rule of thumb seldom accounts for the fact that the deliverables that are develop for one hour training session may differ enormously from one course to another. Therefore one should not trust the ratio that some IDs apply automatically.

Secondly he claims that if one “carefully examines his organization’s unique ID project management model and collect his organizational historical data related to time spent executing various steps to his model, then with his own historical data he will be able to create some fairly accurate custom project estimation.” The advantage he says is the individual is allowed to make detailed easy to negotiate and defend project time /cost.  This is truly better than to trust the ratio supplied which are usually vague.

This is certainly an idea that I would follow if I were given the opportunity to estimate a project time cost. Creating my own ratio would add more meaning to what I am doing and I think I would better be able to explain every detail to my client.

The URL for Michael Greer’s article is http://michaelgreer.biz/?p=279

 

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

As a budding instructional designer this site has provided estimated rates for doing various tasks for a project. Such information will certainly help me in the event that I would be called upon to provide an estimate training cost. Having such information is also a great asset in preparing the budget for the project. It is not the Bible and should only be used as a guide. However, I strongly believe while this estimates are workable one should take the suggestion given by Portny et al (2008), “experience with similar projects suggests that approximately 40 percent of the total budget should be spent on design.”P.130. Being new I will certainly compare other sample estimates with that of Clarke.

Reference

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.