What's your approach to scope creep, as a TPM?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Scope of the project needs to be agreed upon and documented at the beginning of
a project in initiation and planning phases. There should be prioritized list of
requirements that are in scope, requirements that didn't meet the cut and other
things that are out of scope. With time requirements may change due to external
and internal factors. Customers may ask for new things, the team may have new
learnings, priorities may shift due to changes in competitive landscape, etc. It
is important to have change control process such as a change control board and a
template for requesting and approving change requests. Reviewer, Approver,
Consulted and Informed should be define for change requests. Impacts on other
parts of the projects, dependencies, risks and assumptions should be considered.
If the scope impacts the critical path then the timeline and budget should be
adjusted. Agile is a good framework to handle scope creep as there is an
opportunity to adjust the sprint backlog at the beginning of every sprint. As an
example, while developing a VR game customers requested that it support certain
new types of drills for practice. I drove the effort to understand the impact of
adding those drills to budget, timeline and quality and propose a plan to
customers on when those drills could be added that they were happy with. This
allowed us to deliver the initially committed game in phase 1 and do a fast
follow with the requested drills in phase 2 after initial launch.

Anonymous · Answer

As a Technical Program Manager (TPM), managing scope creep is crucial to ensure
project success. Scope creep occurs when changes are made to the project scope
without proper control, leading to potential delays, budget overruns, and
resource misallocation. Here are some strategies to manage and prevent scope
creep effectively:
 1. Define a Clear Project Scope: Establish a well-defined project scope at the
    beginning, detailing all deliverables and exclusions. This involves creating
    a scope management plan that outlines the project's objectives and
    boundaries. This plan serves as a reference to remind stakeholders of the
    agreed-upon scope when new requests arise.
 2. Implement a Change Control Process: Develop a formal change control process
    to handle any requests for additional features or changes. This process
    should require stakeholders to submit change requests, which are then
    reviewed to assess their impact on the project's timeline, budget, and
    resources. Only approved changes should be incorporated into the project.
 3. Communicate Effectively with Stakeholders: Maintain open and transparent
    communication with all stakeholders to manage expectations and prevent
    misunderstandings. Regularly update them on project progress and any
    potential impacts of requested changes.
 4. Monitor Project Progress and Baseline: Continuously monitor the project's
    status against the baseline scope using variance analysis. This helps in
    identifying any deviations early and allows for corrective actions to be
    taken.
 5. Prioritize Deliverables: When changes are necessary, consider
    de-prioritizing other deliverables to accommodate new requests without
    affecting the overall project timeline.
 6. Leverage Agile Methodologies: Agile project management can help manage scope
    creep by allowing for iterative development and regular feedback loops. This
    approach can make projects more adaptable to change while keeping them
    aligned with stakeholder needs.
 7. Educate and Empower Your Team: Ensure that your team understands the
    importance of adhering to the project scope and empower them to push back on
    requests that fall outside the agreed-upon scope without proper approval

Anonymous · Answer

As a TPM I would use a combination of proactive measures and a reactive
strategy.
For the proactive measures I would emphasize on detailed planning, clear
communication and evaluation during execution.
For the reactive strategy I would implement risk management, run risk-benefit
analysis of scope increase proposals and will implement scope change management
with clear and open communication. I would also implement a change management
council with representation for all the stakeholders.
When changing scope for the program it would go through analysis of the risk and
benefits, what would be the impact on increasing the scope for the program and
running the decision through the council. If the scope change is approved the
program items need to be reprioritized. If the risk is too high and the benefit
is too low then the scope change can be pushed out. In all situations it is
important to keep open and honest communication with stakeholders.
When working on a program to improve the continuous integration systems for
Flutter. The initial program proposed a program duration of two years improving
the infrastructure first, followed by migration of the engine repository,
followed next with the framework repository and finally migrating the plugins
repositories. A few months during the execution there was a proposal to increase
the scope of the program to include test frameworks and testing. I ran a
cost-benefit analysis and found that even when investments in testing would
bring huge benefits it would delay the improvements fixing development velocity.
I documented the cost-benefit analysis and the findings and shared with
stakeholders to alignment. The final decision was to push back on the scope
change and everybody was aligned with the decision.

Anonymous · Answer

The Product Backlog is often reviewed with the Product Owner and the team to
keep it aligned with the roadmap (feature Level) and with the product objective
and vision also on establish clear acceptance criteria as to what will needed in
the  story for the PO to accept and also clear Definition of Done details when
the story is considered to be completed .

What's your approach to scope creep, as a TPM?

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