Analyzing Scope Creep

In project management, the scope is an outline of the work and resources that go into creating a promised product or service. Scope creep refers to unplanned changes or extensions to the project’s scope. Scope creep can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, controlled, or encounters unexpected circumstances. Scope creep is considered harmful or at least a nuisance, as it can result in budget overruns, increases in the project’s timeline or frayed nerves. Scope creep can cause the project team to drift away from its original purpose into unplanned additions and as the scope of a project grows, more tasks must be completed within the budget and schedule originally designed for a smaller set of tasks.

In this analysis I was a stakeholder on an home improvement project. The project involved increasing the size of my existing kitchen to make it into an open concept area. The project comprised reconfiguring an adjacent laundry area to increase the size the kitchen. Two adjacent walls had to be cut to create new entrances and an existing doorway sealed. Lighting and electrical fittings, painting, additional kitchen cupboards and appliance would follow.

The scope creep was caused by an unexpected circumstance. While cutting down the first wall the plumbing in the wall broke revealing that the plumbing to other side of the house was connected to the laundry’s plumbing. Before the project could progress any further the home’s plumbing had to be rerouted. This required the additional cost of plumbing fittings and labor. As a stakeholder in the project there was nothing else to be done but to find the necessary funds to complete the additional plumbing work.

Looking back on the experience, we should all have done more due diligence knowing that plumbing was involved. As the project manager I would have found and peruse the house’s existing plumbing diagrams before starting the project.

Resources:

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.

Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

         
Below are two links to websites which deal with project costs in a concise an easy to understand way.

How to Estimate Project Costs for Dummies

This is link to a page on the Project Management for Dummies book website. The page is very informative and gives a concise synopsis of the elements of project costs. The description on the page makes a very good attempt to explain why project costing is important, the difference between direct and indirect costs, followed by a breakdown of what the various costs entail. Below the synopsis is a list of other short articles on project costing that you can familiarize yourself with. You could buy the entire book, but I found the articles enlightening without needing to purchase the book. View the page at the link below:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-estimate-project-costs.html

Project Cost Estimation

This article approaches the discussion on project cost from the point of view of the Work Breakdown Structure or what the author calls “Product Breakdown Structure”. The article talks about standardizing costs across projects and to use a systematic understanding of the types of cost associated with feasibility, development, and deployment. I like the use of the cartoons to get down to the bottom line on costing philosophy. There are additional links to more readings on project costing. View the page at the link below:

http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/project-cost-estimation

 

 

The Art of Effective Communication

In today’s workplace communications takes many forms. As a member of project manager team both written and verbal communication is important when sharing information with the team. Informal and formal communications are also meaningful ways to share information.  Effective communication is “sharing the right messages with the right people in a timely manner” Portny et al (2008). The ability to communicate well, both orally and in writing is a critical skill for project managers. Non-verbal signs like attitude, body language and timing also contribute to effective communication.

A Comparison of three Modes of Communication

	Email	Voicemail	Face-to-Face
Interpretation	Email communication is the most impersonal form of communication.  The message in the words is clear and concise and conveys the urgency of the request. This medium is considered written communication.	Voicemail is more personal. The sender did not identify herself, but the voice conveying the message is clear with a professional tone.  The voice also conveys authority and urgency. This medium is considered oral communication that is formal because the message is recorded.	This is the most personal form of communication because the sender is in close proximity to the receiver.  This is definitely informal oral communication. The sender of the message seems apologetic about the request. The sender is making every attempt to not seem annoyed.
Strengths	The tone of the message is clear and concise and explains the reason for the request and the consequence if the request is not granted. The message does not relay the mood of the sender. This method is straight forward and to the point but lacks a personal touch.	A voicemail allows the sender to be clear and concise but distant and more formal. Unlike the email the receiver can judge the tone and mood of the sender’s voice. This method is also straight forward and to the point.	This method allows interaction between the sender and the receiver. The receiver can make a judgment about the sender’s mood, tone, body language and facial expression in relation to the message, and make a judgment about the urgency of the request. This is informal communication as there is no written record of this request
Weaknesses	If the message is poorly written the words can be misunderstood causing hurt feelings or anger. There is also no guarantee that the message will be received as the receiver will have to open the email and read the content.	There can also be misinterpretations of the message and there is also no guarantee that the message will be received as the receiver will have to access the voicemail machine and listen to the content.	There is no written record of this message and the receiver can forget that the message was ever sent.
Suggestions	Face to face communication is ideal but it is also necessary to have a written record of the message to ensure that there is no confusion about the content of the message. No one method is satisfactory. A voicemail message should always be followed by either an email or a face to face meeting. A face to face meeting by an email or some form of written record to ensure that the message is not only sent but received.

References:

"The Art of Effective Communication". Multimedia Program. Laureate Education, Inc.

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. Chapter 12, "Communicating and Documenting Project Progress".

Stolovitch, H. (n/d). "Communicating with Stakeholders". Multimedia. Laureate Education, Inc.

Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

I have had moderate success so far in my new job with a task that is still a work-in-progress. During the planning and implementation of this project I made two mistakes. The first was, I failed to create a statement of work because of my lack of experience or training in project management, and the second was allowing one of the project’s main stakeholders to set an unrealistic deliver time for the task’s completion.

The task or project came about as a request to identify and introduce a content management system (CMS) to teachers in a PK-12 school. Teachers needing to create an online presence in their classrooms had introduced various online resources like wikis, blogs and instant messaging applications to enhance their teaching content. This innovation on the part of the teachers, caused parents with multiple children in the school to have to log into many different websites to monitor and assist their children with learning. Parents who were time-strapped and less computer literate complained to school administrators about this issue, and requested one point of entry to their children’s online environment. The purpose of the CMS therefore was to provide one portal to learning for teachers, students, parents and administrators.

A statement of work (SOW) would have made the implementation of the project less pressuring to me the project manager. The SOW would have outlined to the stakeholders what the project would produce and the terms and conditions under which the project would be carried out. Because this document was not created the stakeholders had unrealistic expectations of the delivery time for the project. The CMS was successfully implemented and is in use, but the implementation took longer than the stakeholders expected.

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.

The Future of Distance Learning

 

 

  

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

“In his TED talk presentation Sugata argued that present day schools were first designed in the Victorian age with the mandate to produce the skills needed to administrator the Victorian empire’s bureaucratic system. The education system for these schools was designed with one specific requirement and that was to make learning happen. According to Sugata the Victorians designed such a robust education system that even though the empire has been dismantled the education system still exists. Sugata says that the education system needed in the future is not about “making learning happen, it’s about letting it happen”.

Distance learning in the future

“One of the unique aspects of distance education over the last few years is really its growing acceptance in society as a whole” Siemens (2010). That is because as more and more people engage in online communication experiences they become more comfortable with technology and distance ceases to be important. People who traditionally communicated face-to-face are making a shift to meaningful online relationships. Family and friends are using simple social tools like SKYPE™ to communicate from a distance, making the notion of education at a distance more credible. The proliferation of social online interactions is making people more comfortable with communication technology and this factor is setting the stage for future wide scale participation in distance online education experiences.

Improving societal perceptions

The instructional designer’s sole responsibility in improving societal perceptions of distance education is to design, develop and implement relevant, rigorous and effective education experiences for the distant online environment. A critical factor is the instructional designer’s skills and competencies in course design and their ability to collaboratively support instructors by designing courses that effectively engage students.

Continuous improvement

As the quality of communication technologies improve the production of more technically perfect distance educational experiences will increase. According to Siemens distance education will then become more distributed, and begin to attract greater contributions from experts around the world leading to the increased use of multimedia, games, simulations and more video work within courses. The improvement of distant education experiences will “support a growing shift towards what some have called the triple helix model of education and that’s where we have universities, government and business, and the three of them together form a strand of interaction to provide and to equip students for this online environment” Siemens (2010).

References

Siemans, G. (2010) “The Future of Distance Education”. [Video Podcast] Retrieved from Laureate-media.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

SKYPE. http://www.skype.com/en/what-is-skype/.

Sugata, M. (February 2013) “Build a School in the Cloud”. TED2013. Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html.

A Best Practice Guide

“The heart of distance education is the concept of separation of teacher and learner” Simonson et al (2013). Successfully engaging learners in the online experience results in successful learning. Therefore successfully presenting a course of study at a distance requires a great deal planning, and consideration given to the four major components of the online instructional environment, the Learner, the Instructor, the Method of Communication and the Course Content and Activities.

Before creating new online learning environments or converting existing face-to-face classrooms to an online format, instructors, facilitators, instructional designers and subject matter experts should ensure that the learners experience success. Click the link below to download a copy of the best practice guide.

Best Practice Guide

Reference:

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson. Chapter 5 “Instructional Design for Distance Education”.

  

The Impact of Open Source

Open Source is a free online learning initiative that offers online not-for-credit courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Two high-profile open courseware projects are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open CourseWare initiative through which MIT has placed materials from over a thousand courses online, and Rice University’s Connexions project. MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.

From the MIT open course offerings I selected a course from the Cross-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship group, ESD 801, Leadership Development. Check the course link below.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/engineering-systems-division/esd-801-leadership-development-fall-2010/.
The course page has menu items to the left containing the content available in the course. There is a syllabus, reading resources, and assignments. When the learner downloads the course materials, an offline version of the course is saved to the local computer. Accessing the interface is easy. The syllabus carefully outlines the distance learning to be experienced and includes a brief course overview, learning objectives, grading, calendar information about the sessions, topics and key dates, and Leadership Lunches; biographies of the invited guest speakers.

Does the course appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment? I cannot measure the amount of planning or lack of that went into this course. The basic information is made available to the learner but the lack of instructor presence and the inability for feedback means that learner is solely responsible for the engagement and motivation needed to complete the course of study. All the course textbooks are linked to a Buy at Amazon button; however there are sufficient web-based reading materials.

Does the course follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in the course textbook? Of the eighteen principles defined by the “Guiding Principles for Faculty in Distance Learning” set out by the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education (IPSE, 2000), this course shows some evidence of the following four:

1.      Distance learning courses will be carefully planned to meet the needs of students within unique learning context and environments.

2.      Learning activities are organized around demonstrable outcomes embedded in the course components…

3.      Content developed for distance learning courses will comply with copyright law.

4.      The medium/media chosen to deliver courses and/or programs will be … accessible to students, receptive to different learning styles, and sensitive to the time and place limitations of students.

The course activities do not maximize active learning as there is no interaction between the learner and the instructor. The learner has to compare completed assignments with the examples of completed assignments included with the course. Each assignment has four student examples for comparison. Very loosely the examples range from good to acceptable. The instructor did not include a rubric with the package.

References

Newman, Dava. ESD.801 Leadership Development, Fall 2010. (MIT OpenCourseWare: Massachusetts Institute of Technology), http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/engineering-systems-division/esd-801-leadership-development-fall-2010 (Accessed 5 Oct, 2013). License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson. Chapter 4, "Technologies, The Internet, and Distance Education" (pp. 141). Chapter 5, "Instructional Design for Distance Education".