Working as an instructional designer for a government contracting company can sometimes be challenging. There are frequent changes in the requirements themselves not to mention the fact that the government employee who is assigned as the project manager often requests additional tasks be performed than was originally agreed to in the project scope.
The most recent instance of scope creep occurred about four months ago on a project that my team was working on. We had been developing and revising training materials for the American warfighter for several weeks when the PM informed us that we would also be required to provide training materials as well as classroom instruction to the government trainers as well. We were now being tasked to train the trainers. This news was not initially well received as we were struggling to meet the timeline for the requirements for which we were currently tasked.
The section manager for our company as well as our team leader explained the situation to the government PM and the ramifications that such a seemingly simple request would have. New requirements would have to be drawn, funding terms would have to be agreed to, and a new timeline would need to be created. These issues were apparently not deterrents as we were given the go ahead to proceed with the latest assigned tasks.
Of course it is easy to be an armchair quarterback and critique what perhaps should have been done to prevent scope creep. With that being said, had I been the PM for this task, I would have ensured that all phases of ADDIE were more fully explored and developed before commissioning the task be undertaken. Also scheduling routine meetings between team members invites open and honest communication and allows an opportunity to report on the project status and discuss potential problems before they metamorphosize into catastrophic failures (Greer, 2010).
Reference
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
