Most of the time, as a project manager, change requests must go through you before they can be approved. That way, you have the ability to adjust the scope, schedule, and cost and keep the entirety of the project properly maintained. But we’ve all seen this situation: the client or sponsor gets a hold of someone other than the project manager and all of a sudden there’s major scope creep. I’ve noticed two critical areas where this tends to occur:
Someone breaks the communication structure and contacts a project team member directly, getting them to commit to additional scope.
A higher-ranking person in your company (usually someone involved in sales) makes a promise to the client without consulting the project team.
Once one of these scenarios has occurred, the additional scope is the least of your worries because now the client not only expects the extra work but also that it will not affect time or cost. Dealing with these new challenges is difficult, but not impossible.
Of course, the best method is prevention. Ideally, the project manager will be proactive at the beginning of the project, carefully explaining the change request process to all stakeholders and making it very clear that no additional scope will occur without proper approval, no matter who promises it. It is important to get this documented and signed by the client. This will not completely mitigate all instances of scope creep, but it should eliminate a good 80-90% of cases.
If a proactive approach still results in scope creep, the project manager can always use direct communication with the client to try to stop it by explaining that, although someone on the project team or someone on your side made a promise, it cannot be honored because it was not made through the proper change request process. If you’ve made sure to have the client sign a document outlining the change process, this shouldn’t pose any problems. You’ll also want to discuss unofficial promises with the stakeholders on your side to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Unfortunately, we’re sometimes stuck honoring an unofficial change one way or another. If it has come to this, there are some tricks that can help maintain the project’s momentum. Fast tracking tasks and creating work overlaps will help to keep the schedule together. There might also be some opportunities at reductions in other areas of the project if there are non-essential activities that could stand to be cut. Finally, try using some of the buffers that you’ve built into different areas of the project to handle these new changes. All of these techniques carry risk, but if successful, can keep your project on track.
Harris Eisenberg, MBA
Harris has worked in a project management role within both the marketing and music industries. Most recently, as Strategy and Business Lead for a small marketing agency in Virginia, Harris managed dozens of projects from individual brochure development to enterprise software development for the Federal government. If you wish to contact Harris, you may email him at harris.eisenberg@gmail.com.
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private training classes to help prepare business professionals for professional certifications like the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
