Scope creep can be defined as, “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, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, &
Kramer, 2008). After reading this
definition I am reminded of many projects I have been involved with in the
field of secondary education. The part
of the definition that most grabs me is the part about project team
members. The scope of a project can
definitely change when you get a group of dedicated and talented educators in a
room together and the ideas start to fly.
One example of this occurred towards the end of my tenure at
my first teaching job. I had worked for
that district for over five years as a social studies teacher and had worked
well with a few other teachers who started around the same time. The high school used to have a travel club
that created overseas travel opportunities for students. The club disbanded before I started at the
school when the teacher who oversaw it for many years retired. Certain groups in the school traveled, but
they were always tied into a content area or class and we felt it was important
to offer travel opportunities that were not tied to a specific club or
class. I and three other teachers from
other departments set out to bring back the travel club.
We started by getting approval from the building principle
who was an enthusiastic supporter of student opportunities, although he was not
one to help define projects and preferred to get projects handed to him that
were completely defined and ready to go.
With his tentative approval to move forward we contacted the retired
teacher who used to run the travel club.
We visited him afterschool and he gave us all kinds of inspirational
stories of student travel. He was still
in touch with many students from his three decades of teaching and many of
those relationships were through travel.
Excited by the retired teachers successes we met again to
try and create an outline for how the club would operate. By this time the school board had been
informed of our plans and while supportive they added a lot of expectations we
were not prepared for. Some suggestions
were obvious such as code of conduct expectations and liability, but others
were not. A big stumbling block was that
all trips needed to connect to learning.
This was puzzling since our initial goal was to revive a club that had
travel as its central theme and not a connection to a class or club. Through some emails we tried to explain that
the club needed to be free from connected learning to a class, the trip itself
was the experience.
In the meantime, our group discussed funding ideas,
destinations, as well as ways to create learning standards. Our principle wanted us to finalize the club
details before the spring so it could be featured as part of a transition night
that showcased the different clubs and activities at the school. Very quickly our project idea moved from the initial
feasibility phase to a club that needed to justify its existence as well as
present evidence of what it did to parents and students. In a few short weeks the scope of this
project expanded far faster than we were prepared to deal with.
I wish I could say we managed the increased scope of the
project and revived the travel club, but the pressure of our principle to
produce something combined with the school board’s insistence on tying travel
to state standards proved too much, too fast.
On a positive note I learned that as the head soccer coach I could
create travel opportunities for my team, but by leaving it open to any
interested students I circumvented state rules about having contact with my
players out of season. In my second to
last year at that school I took a group of 17 high school students, most of
them soccer players, to England for a week during our spring break. Besides exploring London, a city I had
visited multiple times before, we saw two soccer matches. It was a great experience and I am still in
touch with some of those students who I traveled with.
Looking back on the project I would have done a few things
different. First, as a group we never
elected a project lead. A strong leader
would have moved things along. Also,
since we did not have a lead we were receiving different communication from the
board and our principle. Next, we
started with the final product and tried to work backwards. A better approach would have been identifying
what the procedure and expectations were in a more chronological order. As we ran into roadblocks that did not fit
our image of what the travel club would be we stalled out and lost momentum. Finally, we should have defined the project
before presenting our idea to the principle and the board.
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.
