Meat + Poultry - June 2009 - 82

SCOPE CREEP

someone else will be doing something
and gaps are almost certain to occur.
One issue that frequently is cited as
a reason why more stakeholders are
not involved in a project is the need for
conﬁdentiality, particularly in the case
of a new-product launch. People simply
do not know how much can be shared.
Share too much and you risk having
vital information reach your competitors' ears. Share too little information,
and you may have a cause for scope
creep later during the project. Balancing these risks requires the delicate
task of ﬁnding people who know the
most about the project requirements
but who are low- risk for compromising conﬁdentiality. The more honest/
open your company is, the less likely
scope creep will occur. Yet doing so
creates vulnerability to letting information out to competitors. Knowledge
sharing, therefore, must be balanced
with the real, not perceived need for
conﬁdentiality.

isting conditions that you have not explored are bound to appear, whether
those conditions are from your target
market, regulatory requirements, distribution channels, quality, etc. The solution, then, lies in knowing as much
as you can.
For some people, this means having a checklist in hand. Checklists can
indeed be helpful tools, but they can
never cover all the potential issues.
Even better is to have a person on your
team - preferably leading the project -
who does not need a checklist because
he or she has been through the process

Do you know what you
need to know?
Experience counts

before. Experienced Project Managers
can tell/sense when a project has been
well planned, thereby avoiding major
gaps. They can also sense a level of
completeness about a project.
Last but not least: Consider the need
to engage experienced outside team
members, such as engineers, equipment
vendors, contractors and more. In fact,
some companies are moving to projectdelivery models where they maintain
consultants or vendors from project to
project because those organizations
"know us and what we want." They
theorize that doing so creates greater
project agility and value.

Control of scope creep is made more
challenging by the varying levels of experience of stakeholders:
* The less experienced the organization, the more that is not known.
* Larger organizations generally have
more experience, but their size also
creates more opportunities for communication issues to occur.
Organizations that are often the best
at limiting scope creep are those that
are nimble enough and small enough
to react easily to changes and communicate well with all players.
For your company, this means that
you must understand the inﬂuence of
experience and ﬂexibility on the composition of your project team and do
your best to mitigate the issues that
arise by seeking as much experience
as possible. Recognize what questions
to ask, because certainly there will be
things you know and things you don't
know. For example, if this is a ﬁrst-time
application for your company, pre-ex82

MEAT&POULTRY

June 2009

The best way to reduce
scope creep risk is with
a knowledgeable and
experienced team, clear
project objectives and a
well-deﬁned scope.

Do they need to know what
you know? The capital
approval process
Sometimes, both the stakeholders and
team experience are in place to pull off
a project successfully, but the project still
ends up with scope creep thanks to the
process involved in securing approval for
the necessary funding. In these cases, several factors may be at work, including:
* Poor deﬁnition and/or communica-

www.MEATPOULTRY.com

tion of the concept. Obviously, if you
cannot explain to company management what you are planning to deliver,
the project will most likely not be approved. However, in those cases where
a minimal amount of information enables the project to be approved as a
concept, there can be enough gaps
in the project requirements to create
opportunities for scope creep at later
stages of the project.
* Unrealistic expectations by management/post-approval changes. As a
project progresses, particularly those
that were approved as concepts, information will develop and gaps will
be discovered. Will management approve additional funding or a lengthening of the schedule, or will they
tell you that you have to do what
you want with the approved budget
and schedule?
* Strategy changes. A change of strategy by the company at any point in
a project will almost certainly impact scope, schedule and budget. In
most cases, there is little that can be
done in these situations to prevent
this from occurring.

Can you ignore the advice?
Do you have to go into your next project with every possible stakeholder
on board or with a solid grasp of every possible issue that can arise? Certainly not - yet, ignore these risks and
you could end up with a serious case
of scope creep.
The best way to reduce scope-creep
risk is with a knowledgeable and experienced team, clear project objectives
and a well-deﬁned scope. Management
of the unforeseen drivers of scope creep
can then be evaluated against a solid
baseline and the consequences of addressing the new information (potential scope creep) can be evaluated and
resolved promptly.
Mike Steur is Director of Client Development, Food
Industry for Hixson Architecture Engineering Interiors,
Cincinnati, Ohio
We would like to hear from you - to comment on
this story or to request reprints, contact us by
e-mail at: meatpoultry@sosland.com.

http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Meat + Poultry - June 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meat + Poultry - June 2009