Analyzing Scope Creep

Scope creep is nothing new to me in my role as a HR Trainer. In my department, I am responsible for developing training that supports our district's administrators prepare for and execute teacher evaluations. In planning the trainings, often times I experience interruptions in development and implementation from our leadership groups, who find additional items to include at every turn. 

One specific example of scope creep I encounter is the manipulation of deadlines. Our evaluator certification training began in June 2020, yet planning began in February with 9 weeks scheduled to conduct needs assessments, create training content, activities, and determine the LMS to implement rollout. In this case, I had plenty of time to produce the training and the timeline was agreed upon for completion and review. 

Unfortunately, the timeline was derailed in week 2 by my manager, who wanted to produce a project within 6 weeks in hopes to impress district leaders (individuals I might add who did not have go through the certification process) and rollout months earlier than anticipated. My initial inquiry to this request was simply, "Why?". I went on to explain how the abbreviated timeline would affect the tasks I was currently working on (did I tell you I was a one-woman team?), especially the LMS integration, as our vendor had yet to construct the online component that houses the training and the exam. This was planned to occur in week 5, as they were currently working on another concern for our office that required time. I presented that the best solution would be to continue on the original project SOW as confirmed to alleviate additional costs from the vendor to or their inability to meet the new requests. 

Long story short, my request to maintain the initial project SOW was denied. I did request for assistance from a colleague to help accomplish the project within the escalated timeline. Instead, I was replaced with the colleague and reassigned a new project. Due to the new changes, the vendor was not able to create the LMS changes to accommodate the online course within such turnaround and abandoned the project. As a result of this, at the conclusion of the five week timeline, the training was introduced as an instructor-led session over two days in lieu of online with a paper test-- much to the dismay of district leaders. Around this time, COVID-19 became more prevalent, cancelling much of the in-person trainings the district held, including this one. Training was then shifted to occur via Microsoft Teams and its implementation and the processes taken by the manager were highly criticized. 

In hindsight, if I had final decision-making rights to this project, I would have maintained the original timeline. Unknowing that a pandemic would have led us to virtual learning fulI-time, I believe the outcome from the original project would have been an innovative turn for our district, serving as a model for how we could better serve and train our instructional and non-instructional colleagues. I now will work to include change of scope documentation in our planning conversations, even with my reporting managers, to confirm contingencies if and when planning changes occur to the project to help identify and assign accountability in the event the project outcomes are not desirable.