5 Ideas to Mitigate the Scope Changes in Your Project - Part 2 of 2

In this podcast, Ricardo continues to talk about how can we minimize scope changes in a project. He suggests another three other control measures: the formalization, the phasing of the project and the rolling wave planning.

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Episode transcript

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Hello

Speaker 1 (4s): Everybody's welcome to the five minutes PM. Podcast Today I like to continue to the series is about how we can Mitigate Scope Changes. If we have a recap last week, we discussed basically about to topics. We can avoid this scope changes. If we understand the link between the functional requirements, the technical requirements, the technical scope, to make sure that we know exactly how we can translate the customer desire into tasks and into technical work.

The second one that I discussed is to work hard on planning to plan in detail because the detailed will bring Changes, but this Changes can be address before execution. And I like now to share with you the other three things we can do to avoid this. But before I do that, I'd like, just to share one thing. We are not looking here to meet the gate. Scope Changes we went to Mitigate unplanned.

That is Scope Changes is Scope Changes that the client just ask you to do with no negotiation of new deadlines and no negotiation about cost is just a scope creep. You put things inside the scope and you do not negotiate anything. So this is what we are trying to avoid. OK. So the third one is to document and formalize the agreement before the work. What do I mean by that? If you prepare the, a great Scope statement or great WBS, you cannot put it on the drawer and forget it.

No, you need to show it to your customer to show your, to your key stakeholders. Look, stakeholder management is becoming a new knowledge area of the PMBOK guide. So it's so important that the people that stakeholders understand what does your Scope. So you need to reach an agreement before the work. So show, show your WBS showed them your strategies. Don't hide this because may be in the future.

They use C that you will be delivering something that they really do not want to work very hard to do that. The fourth one its if you can split or if you have a long Project remember a time works against Scope because time bring Scope Changes So We. If you can split you're projects into phases and work clearly on phases, a phase after phase B after phase C, you can manage the Changes better.

So let me give you an example that I like very much to do that. Is it a way of making a close that system at least four, a small amount of time? Let the imagine that we or a diver. Okay. We are deep sea divers. So we have our cylinder with oxygen. What we do during the time that we are diving, we are a completely isolated system. You have our own supplier oxygen N we are South sufficient for that 40 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever.

Every 30 minutes or 40 minutes, I need to go up and refill my tank with oxygen and also take a look. Is there any thunderstorm coming? Is there any trouble that I need to worry? And then I gave again, so for me, the project is pretty much the same, what we can do with creative phase. Yeah. If we phase the project. So during the phase we think OPI nothing will change and the next 45 days, and then we'll do the work and with delivered the work after that, we go up and see, is there anything new here?

Oh no, So dive again. So this is pretty much related to some around a scrum and agile techniques. So this will be help a lot for you to avoid Changes during ah, in the middle of a phase. And this will bring space to one second. Yup. I like very much as the rolling wave planning, the rolling wave planning is a way of handling with projects with a lot of uncertainty. So what you do in the works that are pre close to you, Today you bring in more details.

You do a more detailed planning in the immediate term. You do less time. The day only the long term, you do even less the tail. And that's soon as you start having a new information, you create more details on that. This is very good to handle with the communication process with your stakeholders. But this brings a lot of risk in some kind of country that's because if you have a fixed from him, the price and then a contract where you don't have any, any way of life of change in the cost of soft change, the deadlines, this could be a very dangerous the process because if some changes came to the future, when we use start at the table in the future, you will need to re do a, do a new agreement with your customer.

So sometimes this is a big challenge. When you have fits a firm price, you need to go to the solution. Number two, work hard on planning in detail because you need to Bataille everything to make sure that your costs instructor who will feed the prize, that the customer is paying for you. But if you have a good, a good agreement, a relationship based on trust, so you can work together, developing through rolling wave planning with that over time Changes that will come to the project.

We'll be back in Africa. It's very important. If we return to beginning of the day broadcast, I'm not against Scope Changes, I'm just against the nightmare off and blend. It Scope changes that you cannot manage that can not review your deadline's, that you can not review your costs this time, the real nightmare for the project manager. I just want to know you to do more, but I don't give you anything. And I use usually pour planning because you can plan it poorly or a lack of agreement to do that.

But in order ways, the customer and the Project don't know exactly what they intend to produce. They have just a rough idea and they are developing it together. What are the scope changes to be part of the business and will be negotiated? And this is not the problem. This is part of normal life. So we need to understand this. We need to understand. And what I'm trying to avoid is just this year, a planet dis terrible kind of changed at that where people can you start just to try to go into works on the project without a doubt in the new money or any new resource, any new time for that.

And this will just blow up the Project results. So this is what we need to think about. So I hope that this five basic tips that I gave to you in 10 minutes could help you to address this better. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcast.

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