Image courtesy of http://agilepm.com/managing-scope-creep-in-agile-projects
Last summer I was asked to be part of a medical fraud project for
our company. The original scope of the
project was to teach investigators about no-fault medical fraud occurring in NY
and extrapolate for the rest of the country.
The training was to be 2 1 and ½ hour virtual classes run on web-ex with
a facilitator, of which I was going to be one of them. Our initial scope was to identify some of the
fraudulent billing practices of medical providers and train investigators how
to recognize them.
What we ended up with was, 6 two hour training modules on the computer,
and 6 web-ex sessions each lasting 2 hours long.
The scope crept up from just the billing to include durable medical
equipment to deceptive medical practices and fraud perpetrated by the medical
office as a whole, how to conduct a site visit, and, fraud perpetrated by the
patients themselves. Each module was
essentially the same with all topics addressed.
By the end of the 3rd module,
people were bored and instead of learning, most multitasked through the
training segments. It was painfully
obvious by the lack of engagement and participation. The stakeholders kept adding more and more,
and the designer of the project didn’t really push back.
In the end, it was an encompassing training course, but I
personally felt that because the scope was so large, that it was a broad brush
stroke over the entire subject instead of getting down into the details and
really teaching the participants what was desired in the first place, which was
how to look at the billing and search for blatant and discreet errors in coding
and charges.
If I had been the project manager, I would have agreed that the
other topics brought in are valuable, but that each one in its own right deserved
a training module. This would have allowed the designer to focus on one main
topic at a time which could have then been delivered to create the largest
learning impact. After that, then
another topic, and then another could have been added at a later date. The training would have been segmented, and
in the end, an all-encompassing case study could have been presented to check
the learners understanding of all the subject matter.
These are 10 steps to help with curbing scope creep.
1.
Educate your staff.
2.
Clearly define the project.
3.
Gather all relevant information.
4.
Define the objectives and
deliverables.
5.
Assign a project sponsor.
6.
Create an approval process.
7.
Stay on track.
8.
Create a good communication process.
9.
Understand when change is necessary.
10. Schedule regular meetings.
Scope creep can lead to project
failure. It can inflate costs, time and
resources. The desired outcome can be distorted
because the project morphed into something it was never intended to be. Learning can be compromised and the finished
product can have less depth because of the breadth of the project. Careful steps must be taken by the project manager
to ensure that scope creep does not overtake the entire project.
References
