Scope creep is a term that refers to the “natural tendency
of the client, as well as project team members, to try to improve the project’s
output as the project progresses” (Portny et. al, 2008). This is a problem that
happens frequently in project management, but it’s also common in other areas
of life.
As a teacher, scope creep is something that happens frequently. As an example, a teacher prepares a lesson
that covers a specific objective – it’s a great lesson, with interactive
multimedia components and lots of classroom collaboration. (In this scenario, we are thinking of the
students in the role of the client.) The lesson begins smoothly, but soon the
students find they are very interested in finding out more about the background
of the topic, something the teacher didn’t include in the original lesson.
In this scenario, does the teacher redirect students to
stick to the original plan, or does the teacher adjust the lesson to account
for this scope creep? Most teachers would agree that addressing students’
curiosity and interest in a topic is very important, but what’s the tradeoff?
Perhaps the lesson won’t get finished in the allotted time span, lengthening
the unit and pushing back the unit exam. If the timeline isn’t negotiable,
perhaps the teacher will have to cut out another part of the instruction, or
move more quickly over other material in order to make up for the time spent on
unplanned activities.
Another recent example of the problem of scope creep has occurred
in my current position. I was given a group of students who did not pass the
language arts portion of the state standardized test last year, and asked to
work with these students on targeted interventions to help them master key
content. However, as the class got started and I began working with students, I
also found that students lacked basic foundation skills as well, like reading
comprehension, how to take notes, and test-taking strategies. These are important skills that will also
help students perform better on standardized test, so we needed to come up with
a way to expand the scope of the course to accommodate the extra instructional
goals. We are still working this out, but the short-term plan is to spend more
instructional time with the students than previously planned.
Teachers are often both instructional designers and project
managers as they lead their classes. It’s important to keep the concept of
scope creep in mind, so that teachers can appropriately manage the risks
involved.
Portney, 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.
