Analyzing Scope Creep

Project Scope Creep refers to uncontrolled changes or added objectives in a project’s scope (Project Scope Creep, 2012). After researching the definition of project scope creep, I reflected back on a personal project that I had a few years ago. Every year Christmas Eve dinner is at someone’s home and this particular year dinner was set to be at my home. The guest of honors usually finds out that they are the “Guest of Honor” in June of the year. The year that my husband and I hosted the dinner, we found out in August, which gave us four months to prepare. For the dinner, the host is responsible for decorations, catering, cutlery, etc., and other attendees are responsible for the deserts and beverages. For this, we created a budget, with a list of vendors and their associated cost. We also gathered a listing of attendees who would be responsible for the wine and liquor for the event. We sat down and informed all of the key persons of their responsibilities.

After two months of planning, we found out the caterer was diagnosed with an illness and would not be able to cater the event for us. So, we were back to the drawing board with trying to find a caterer who was available and in the price range of our budget. This was my husband’s responsibility, so I did not worry much about the catering.  Three weeks after finding out about the caterer’s illness, I find out that we still did not have a caterer for the Christmas Eve dinner. We did not have a caterer because my husband was waiting on a friend to get back to him with information on his mother’s catering business. When his friend finally got back to him, we found that the price of the catering increase by $500 and this was going to take us over budget. We had to factor in incidentals and this was not a part of the incidental monies. In order to gain budget, we had to reach out to additional family members were able to contribute to the budget. Because the event was a month away during the holiday season, we did not have a lot of time to search for another caterer, we had to go with his friend’s mother’s business.

If I was in charge of catering, I would have taken the time that was spent waiting on the friend’s mother and researched other catering companies to see if they were available and able to complete the catering within budget. I would have also looked back at the previous researched vendors to see if they were still open for those dates. Those vendors were already a part of the list, we could have picked on from that list and negotiated charges and we would not have lost the time waiting and stressing about whether or not the mother could complete the catering for the event.

Reference:

Project Scope Creep. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.projectscopecreep.com/