Analyzing Scope Creep

     Scope creep is defined as the natural tendency to try to improve the output of a project as the project progresses (Portny et al., 2008). Our Blog assignment instructions this week tells us that in many projects there may be pressure to include activities or deliverables that weren’t originally envisioned as part of the project. Other factors such as receipt of additional funding, changes in timelines or priorities of stakeholders as well as the loss and replacement of project team members can all cause distractions and changes in the direction of a project. This is essentially scope creep.

     To help further explain scope creep, I’ll relay a current project of mine that I inherited with a huge scope creep problem. The project was originally taken on to double the production from a machine by designing a new steel serration process that took one strip of steel and produced two equal halves used to manufacture a product. The project started off like any other. However, it was not managed by a Project Manager (PM). It was loosely managed by the stakeholders, the maintenance team and the plant manager. Lynch et al. (2007) state that a PM must lead projects in several phases, one of which is the control phase. In that phase, monitoring of the scope, schedule, budget, risk and stakeholder and sponsor expectations are a must (Lynch et al, 2007). For this project there was no PM, no project charter created, no scope and no Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) created for this project. Essentially there was no one central person to control the project. Despite this, the project ran smoothly in the beginning. However once the machine was built, tuned in and put into trial production the lack of control became evident and the scope went wild.


     First off, there was not material pre and post control envisioned. Ultimately, three major pre-processing and three major post-processing material handling devices were added. As you may have guessed, these were not originally planned for. The budget for the machine went completely out of control with these additions. The unspoken and unwritten scope was forgotten and suddenly the project went from a simple serration process to a material handling behemoth which coincidentally serrated bars.

     Specifically the scope creep has resulted in a nearly never ending project. As the material handling beast grew there was a loss of control of the budget, resources, and schedule. Most of all the project team members became mired in indecision and confusion. At the time, the stakeholders dealt with the issues by becoming frustrated, barked out orders and threatening that heads would roll. This was wrong in a couple of ways. First off, never lead from a position of power that creates fear. While fear is a motivator, it does not result in the best effort from employees. Secondly, this was effectively telling the project team to “just do something to fix the issue.” That led to an uncoordinated effort and one that mostly shot from the hip and was not well thought out or planned.

     Portny et al. (2008) state that the PM must control the project by using a set of activities that ensures the project proceeds according to plan and produces the desired results. One such activity is to meet and reconfirm the plan by reviewing and assessing the project’s goal and deliverables (Portny et al., 2008). After the scope crept this should have been the first course of action by management.

     Looking back now and based on that idea, had I been in the position of managing the project I would have held a meeting to assess the current status of the project. First item of discussion would be based on a sunk cost analysis and whether the project should continue or not. If it was determined the project could still result in a successful profitable outcome, the next topic would be to discuss the scope. I’d want to get down to how the scope could be reaffirmed and then modified to meet the current state of the project with clear limits on further creep. This would be done by cutting out partially completed project additions that were not necessary and/or were money pits and only completing those additions that were necessary for the project to successful complete. Once all of that is established, I would then create a project charter complete with a scope, a WBS, a budget and a schedule. The charter would be signed by all of the stakeholders and a project re-kickoff meeting held to announce the new course to team members. Additionally, the analysis would determine whether any team member changes are needed.

     As it stands now the project is progressing and the scope has been refined and limited. We are just now beginning to see daylight at the end of the tunnel that is not an on-coming train. The project does seem to have an end in sight that is favorable.

     In closing, scope creep can lead to project overruns in the form of missed timelines, failure to produce deliverables, and budgets gone amuck. Precise and constant controls of the project are a must by the PM in order to maintain control and deliver a project on time and on budget.


References

Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge. Copyright by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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

       This week we were tasked with finding resources online that can be used to help with the planning and scheduling of projects that are related to the Instructional Design (ID).

Before I present that, I want to answer the following question:

What do you find the most challenging about estimating activity durations and resource costs?

       The most challenging part is when you don’t know from your own personal experience what it takes to perform a task and you have to rely 100% on the expertise of your Subject Matter Experts (SME) or Project Team members. Additionally, when a Project Manger (PM) is new to a company or team, it may be difficult for them to trust what their SMEs are telling them. I have been in that situation a few times and have learned to be very careful and very diligent yet polite and research my SMEs and project team member thoroughly. I don't like being left in a situation where my SME or other team member is incompetent or procrastinates. However, the time it takes to research, create schedules and coordinate meetings in the planning phase of a project is a time killer. Achong (n.d) state that one must budget time and cost for administrative task because they are very time consuming and often overlooked (Achong & Budrovich, n.d). Budrovich (n.d.) states that often one must sacrifice in project management and some tradeoffs are required (Achong & Budrovich, n.d). This could be due to an incompetent SME, someone leaving the company or team, an unexpected illness or death. When searching for that trade off, Budrovich (n.d.) states that one should never sacrifice the time line or quality. He suggests always to request a budget increase and possibly cut back on the scope of the project (Achong & Budrovich, n.d). Stolovich (n.d) recommends finding resources in alternative locations such as interns, local professional associations or even coworkers in related departments. (Stolovich, n.d.).

Onto the subject for this week

       To assist in estimating costs, effort and activity durations associated with projects, and particularly ID projects, it is always helpful to have additional tools at your disposal. Below are two sites I found helpful:

Amy's Blog - EstimatingCosts and Allocating Resources

SonJan - EstimatingCosts and Allocating Resource

Amy's Blog - Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

       This is a Blog that is updated fairly often. The Blog is hosted by wordpress and has an attractive theme. It is not loud or noisy and the writing is professional. The project management information was great. I like the way the author incorporated hyperlinks into her comments and suggestions. The hyperlinks were in fact the most helpful thing I found on the Blog as there were several great ones such as Brighthub and a link to a Project Management Budget.

SonJan - Estimating Costs and Allocating Resource

       This is another Blog that is very well written and professional looking. The information contained in it is concise but chocked full of content. The Blogger uses proper source citation and embedded several graphics to help get her ideas and suggestions across. The most helpful part of this Blog were the graphics associated with the ADDIE process and how those apply to the Project Management estimations, schedule and budget setting.

Resources

Achong, T. & Budrovich, V. (n.d.) Practitioner Voices: Resource Challenges (Video Program). Laureate Education, Inc.

Amy's Blog - Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources. (2011). Retrieved from http://amysnews.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/estimating-costs-and-allocating-resources/

SonJan - Estimating Costs and Allocating Resource. (2009). Retrieved from http://sonjanmcp.blogspot.com/2011/10/estimating-costs-and-allocating.html

Stolovich, H. (n.d.) Project Management Concerns: Locating Resources (Video Program). Laureate Education, Inc.

Communicating Effectively

In the Multimedia Program “The Art of Effective Communication” (n.d.), a message from one coworker to another is delivered via e-mail, voice mail and in person. The message content expressed the need for the co-worker being contacted to confirm a delivery date on a report so that the other coworker does not miss a deadline for their own report. The message is cordial but direct.  

The communication was first presented as an e-mail.  As I read the e-mail the message came across as urgent yet polite I understood the message and I was not offended by it nor did I feel rushed. The second method was via a voice mail message. Again the tone of the person leaving the message was polite but direct, and was recited verbatim to the e-mail. To me, the message seemed to be little more effective since it associated a real person with the need and out a voice to that person. The last presentation was in the form of a face to face conversation. The coworker in need of the report again recited the e-mail verbatim, but did it face to face with the second coworker. This method seemed to be the most effected as it not only got the message across, but it put a face and a voice with the request

All three of these messages were informal. Portny et al. (2008) state that there are two main types of communication; formal and informal. In formal communication, the content is preplanned and conducted in a standard format in accordance with an established schedule. They go on to state that informal communication occurs as people think of the information they want to share. While the three messages were definitely in a format based on proper use of the English language and politeness, they were in fact informal as they occurred as the coworker realized they needed to communicate their requirements,

The implications of what this means to me as far as how I can use it to communicate effectively with members of a project team are varied. Effective communication is and essential skill of any Project Manager (PM). I learned that to be the most effective I need to communicate in person as much as possible.

References

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 Art of Effective Communication. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html

Week 2 - Project Post-Mortem

Greer (2010) states that it important for Project Managers (PM) and project team members to examine a completed project at its end and develop a list of lessons learned so that they don't repeat any mistakes in the next project. Greer (2010) refers to this as a post-project review or "post mortem." (Greer, 2010).

This week we were tasked with recalling a project in our past where we were not happy with its results. For me, this was an easy call. I recently took a new job that includes, among other thing, project management. I started on Halloween of2011 and my first big project was the rebuild of a machine that was to be shipped to our Canadian manufacturing plant. I studied the machine design, supervised the machine shop that made the modifications and worked with the engineer that designed all of the changes. Based on feedback from these project team members, my immediate supervisor, upper management, the plant managers at both my location and the Canadian location, and the maintenance staff on site I developed a Project Charter, scope, and a timeline. The project began on December 7th, 2011 and was scheduled to complete on December, 29th, 2011. Boy! Was I in for a surprise.

Before getting into the details, Geer (2010) states that you should do a post mortem in two phases. In Phase I you create a specific set of questions to send to the project team members and have them answer. In Phase II you hold a meeting to discuss the answers to these questions. Those questions may look like what Greer (2010) came up with below:

1. Are you proud of our finished deliverables (project work products)? If yes, what's so good about them? If no, what's wrong with them?

2. What was the single most frustrating part of our project?

3. How would you do things differently next time to avoid this frustration?

4. What was the most gratifying or professionally satisfying part of the project?

5. Which of our methods or processes worked particularly well?

6. Which of our methods or processes were difficult or frustrating to use?

7. If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about the project, what would you change?

8. Did our stakeholders, senior managers, customers, and sponsor(s) participate effectively? If not, how could we improve their participation?

 

Now, onto my miserable project

First off, I made a rookie mistake. It was December, "Hello! The holidays..." I scheduled the project and got approval from management and the project team members. The project was scheduled to run sequentially for three weeks. Much to my surprise, a week into the schedule all of the project team members went on vacation. What! It was almost as if they wanted me to fail.

I had neglected to anticipate the vacations that everyone would be taking. It was the end of the year, people had to take their earned vacation for the year or lose it when the new year rolled around. Let me tell you, that fact was not lost on them. They left in a mass exodus. Not only that, the company had Christmas Eve and Christmas day off, as well as New Year’s eve and New Year’s day (so much for trying to catch up).

Onto the questions

I am proud of the deliverables. The machine turned out nice and the modifications work like a charm. However, the project ran three times as long (from 3 to 9 weeks). Along the way there was trouble after trouble after trouble. Parts were not ordered, parts did not fit, some parts had to be customer made. Other parts were not even planned for but came up as the project progressed. Much of the work had to be farmed out to other machine shops and costs skyrocketed.

The single most frustrating part of the project was the lack of team play. Everyone left me after a week and took vacation. Then management expected me to still deliver on time.
Next time I am definitely not forgetting vacations, the time of the year, sick days, and any other freak or labor shortage. I will have backups for everyone.

Stepping away from Greer (20102) now, the course assignment requested information on the processes, project artifacts, or activities I included in the project that contributed to its success. Portny et al. (2008) state that a Work Breakdown Structure WBS) is a organized, detailed and hierarchical representation of all work to be performed in a project (Portny et al. 2008). That is exactly what I created in the failed project based on input for the project team. I laid out the who, where, when, why and how of every aspect of the project that I knew about. I also used Microsoft Project to track the project and create a Gantt Chart. However, even with all of that planning it was the things that I did not know about that were the ones that got me and killed the project's deadline.

Additionally, the Blog assignment this week wanted a report on the processes, project artifacts, or activities that I did not include in the project that might have made the project more successful. That is a no-brainer; I should have looked at the calendar. The holidays are never good for projects. Beyond that, I needed to work on bringing the team together better, driving home the importance of keeping to a schedule, and more communication to all stakeholders as the project progressed.

In closing...

There are a lot of things I could have done better on that project. However, failure is not just failure, it is the discovery of yet another way that a project can go bad. That discovery in itself is experience. I learn from my mistakes and the more I fail, the better I get. As a result of the aformentioned failure I have learned how to communicate better, pull together a responsive team and communicate updates to all stakeholders. The current project I am working on closes out next week, and I am ahead of schedule, under budget and delivering more than required. This project is yet another machine rebuild/modification. This time I know all the of the required specifications and I have had full control of all of the resources. That was something I sorely needed in the failed project but did not have.


References

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: 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.

Welcome classmates...

...from Walden University and the EDUC-6145-4 Project Management in Education & Training course!

If you would like to follow my Blog, please do so by clicking on the "Join This Site" graphic and link.

I look forward to working with you for this course.

Clarence

Week 8 - Reflection

Distance learning perceptions are varied and change over time. In the next five, ten and even twenty years distance learning will surely change and evolve. Along with this will be a change and evolution in the perceptions of distance learning, mostly as compared to traditional learning.

As Instructional Designers it is our responsibility to create effective, meaningful and precise instruction that achieves the single most important goal of educating learners. The delivered education must however be thorough so that all learning outcomes are truly achieved. O'Malley & Harrison (1999) stated that student perceptions of the effectiveness of distance and on-line learning may be more important than reality. This perceived learning will contribute to distance learning professional's knowledge of distance learning instruction effectiveness (O'Malley & Harrison, 1999).

Our additional responsibility as Instructional Designers is to constantly evolve. Siemens (n.d.) states that society as a whole is more widely accepting distance education largely due to more and more of us communicating online. Those that thought face to face education was superior to distance education are now having personal and meaningful relationships online. This sets them up to easily see how those relationships can be built in an education setting. Siemens (n.d.) adds that society has begun to recognize that distance and geographic separation is not as significant a factor as it has been thought to be. This is based on the proliferation of new tools and technology such as video teleconferences, instant messages, e-mail, online Learning Management Systems (LMS), etc. Siemens (n.d.) goes on to state that society is growing more comfortable with these tools and accepting them in much greater numbers. Learners have also discovered that as they get to get together in learning groups with likeminded people using these new tools they are often doing so with a globally diverse group (Siemens, n.d.).

With these growing acceptances, one may wonder where distance education is heading as a whole. Siemens (n.d.) suggests that we will inevitably see improved technologies that deliver better and better voice and video quality and experts from around the world in these fields will become contributors to the new distance learning .There will also be an increase in the use of multimedia such as games and simulations (Siemens, n.d.). Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (2001) fits right into this scenarios and distance learning is the perfect place to apply Mayer’s theory (Mayer, 2001).

As Instructional Designers we can do many things to improve societal perceptions of distance learning. We can start by embracing these new tools. As we produce more and more advanced designs, we should also be sure to apply valid learning theories, such as Mayer’s cognitive multimedia theory, as the basis for them. Additionally, Siemens (n.d.) states that the key challenge is to bridge the gap of comfort within learners so that they become comfortable learning at a distance. Siemens adds that of the students that he has questioned who have taken at least two online courses the majority of them tend to prefer distance learning to traditional learning (Siemens, n.d.). For Instructional Designers to be a positive force for continuous improvement in the field of distance education we must learn from the learners and use our designs to help significantly drive the future of distance education. We do this by creating instruction that not only meets the requirements I mentioned early on in this post, but by also making them attractive, interesting, contain the latest tools, and most of all “cool” (but not at the expense of quality).

In closing I feel that the future of distance learning is the future of all learning. Siemens (n.d.) described the future of Distance Learning as the triple helix model where universities, government and businesses form an interconnected strand of that conspires to equip students for online environment (Siemens, n.d.). I think that is a wise prediction but I also feel that distance learning will one day overtake traditional learning in its percentage share of the learning environment. While it may never completely replace traditional learning, traditional learning will never be without some aspect of distance learning ever again .I foresee all future education containing some component, such as a video conference, an Internet delivered video or collaboration, and any number for computer networked content delivery. As society becomes more and more “connected” and geographic boundaries disappear, learners limiting themselves to just local universities will become a thing of the past. The world is now the stage for education, not just your local state or community college.

References

Kearsly, G.(n.d.) Tips for training online instructors. Retrieved from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/OItips.htm

Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

O'Malley, J., McCraw, H., (1999). Students perceptions of distance learning, online learning and the traditional classroom. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, II(IV), Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/omalley24.html

Siemens, G. (n.d.). The Future of Distance Education. Retrieved from http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/Walden/EDUC/6135/08/downloads/WAL_EDUC6135_08_A_EN-CC.zip

Week 5 - The Impact of Open Source

While Open Source courseware, such as Moodle, is popular these days, another phenomenon referred to as Open Courses seem to be catching on as well. The differences between the two are vast and the only thing they really have in common is the word “open” in their name.

Open Source courseware is a Learning Management System (LMS) whose source code is openly available for download and modification by everyone. That means the actual software can be customized to work with various institutions and users. The courses prepared in the Open Source LMSs are mostly independent of the code used to present them. Open Courses however are instruction that is created and presented to the public for free, using any variety of LMSs and is not tied to any LMS. These Open Courses, though free, are usually copyrighted and have specific terms of use that do not allow them to be altered.

This week I selected an Open Course from Yale entitled PHYS 200: Fundamentals of Physics I (©Yale University, 2012) to evaluate. It is taught by Professor Ramamurti Shankarm, the John Randolph Huffman Professor of Physics at Yale.

I gravitated towards this course for three reasons. First is the fact that it is from Yale, of all places. Secondly, I have seen the same course on iTunesU ® and have had some time to study its content and its delivery. Last, but certainly not least, I have a keen interest in Physics, though I completely lack the math skills to do the coursework.

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·        Does the course appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment? How so?

 

Below is a screen shot from the actual course homepage.

   © Yale University 2012.

As you can see the layout of this open course was very clean. From the beginning you can see that the Web page is not flashy and does not have a lot of distractions going on in the background. Simonson et al. (2012) point out that when creating online instruction the actual online time for delivery is often limited and inflexible. Therefore weeding out extraneous and nonessential information to make room for the essential content is a must (Simonson et al., 2012).

 

Pre-planning for distance learning was done very carefully here. The links from the home page are few but carry a lot of weight. There are links for the syllabus, the recorded video classroom sessions, information on joining a study group, and the Yale bookstore to buy books for the course. One of the best features is that you can download all of the course Web pages (10MB ZIP file) which allows you to view the entire course offline and includes all of the course materials. The course materials also include full transcripts to help with the note taking! Lastly, the video and audio content are also available from YouTube and iTunesU. Once caveat, be sure to read the Terms of Use for all of the Open Yale courses (UYC). The interesting part of those terms to me was the age restriction, where use of OYCs are restricted to those individuals over 18 years of age, emancipated minors, or those who possess legal parental or guardian consent.

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·        Does the course follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in the course textbook Teaching and Learning at a Distance from Simonson et al. (2012)?

While it would seem that Yale had committed the ultimate sin of dumping a face to face design onto the Web and presented it as an online instruction, a method Simonson et al. (2012) referred to as “shovelware”, that is not the case (Simonson et al., 2012). While is it true that the course consist largely of videos recordings of the professor lecturing his students, it does still contain activities that are specific to the online environment (Simonson et al., 2012). Yet Yale sort of gets a pass on this requirement since the course is not actually and active course led by a real live instructor who will hold you to commitments and actually grade your course work. For example, the syllabus states that homework is assigned on Wednesday and is due the following Wednesday before class. The problem is that there is no one to turn the homework into, there is no one to grade it for you and there really is not a class to attend synchronously or asynchronously.

 

Below is the YouTube verision of the first class session.

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·        Did the course designer implement course activities that maximize active learning for the students?

Piskurich (n.d.) states that a good online design based on ADDIE will result in a very complete Syllabus that tells the students exactly what they will learn, how they will learn it, and what is expected of them Piskurich (n.d.). While the course is adapted from a face to face class that was videotaped and it followed the design of that class in the form of course work assignments, the work is highly applicable in the online environment. However, were this to be  a real class that one could actively participate in, there would be a few things that would need to be changed.

First of all, interactive sessions could take place synchronously between students and the Professor at least once a week to help explain key concepts and hold a question and answer session. The remainder of the course could be asynchronous in the form of interactive Web pages that allow for the student to try various solutions to problem in a multiple choice type quiz. However, given the nature of this Open Course it does deliver a slam dunk on content and is very educational. Unfortunately, like all Open Courses, there is not any earned college credits available. If you have the time or need to learn and do not need credits this may be the course for you. I would personally shy away from Open Courses unless I just had nothing better to do with my time. Personally, I like being able to have some ting to show for my efforts.

The Yale Open Course entitled PHYS 200: Fundamentals of Physics I mentioned in this blog is available: http://oyc.yale.edu/physics/phys-200

The course videos can also be viewed on YouTube® at: http://www.youtube.com/yalecourses#g/c/FE3074A4CB751B2B

 

References

 

Piskurich, G. (n.d.). Planning and Designing Online Courses. Retrieved from http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/Walden/EDUC/6135/05/downloads/WAL_EDUC6135_05_A_EN-CC.zip

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