Thursday, June 9, 2011


The situation that I want to present is a personal project.  I am a musician and a year ago I started my second production.  To create a CD You will need to considerate many hours of planning and to take care of things to obtain good results.  Automatically I became the PM of the project, and at the same time the ID.  The first steps of the project are completed at my house.  I also have a music arranger, which turn my ideas true during the preproduction stages.  This process has to be very clear and establish details.  Once there are agreements with the other parts; this is permanent.  One example is the selection of songs; once they’re selected we need to search for copyrights and permissions.  This stage brings much money invested and many planning.

After the music arranger started, he calls me to share some suggestions and to change songs.  He wanted to use certain songs that he had the approval of recording them.  Starting the project all over again, meant a waste of money.  This situation interrupted my musical inspiration.  There were many calls, insisting on changing materials.  I don’t want to ignore how this situation made me stop my recording.  I wasn’t sure on how to handle this situation.  I decided to stay firm and share with him my desire to continue the recording as planned.

“There are critical moments when project teams have just gotta say “no!”.(Greer, M. 2010). This weren’t easy moments.  I was trying to keeping it as it was.  This changes affected my timeline and it brought many disappointments.  It end up delaying the date for the release and changes on the agenda.   An important detail is the fact that I didn’t include an PM that would have all evidence and documentation to avoid Scope Creep.   Factors should as “change Scope document” could help us.  These documents help us to stay firm and not accept changes.

References:

“Practitioner Voices: Overcoming ‘Scope Creep’” Walden University, 2010

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

“Project Management Concerns: ‘Scope Creep’” Walden University, 2010

3 comments:

  1. Carlos
    That is a good example of scope creep. In my "former life" I managed and booked some local bands. One of the projects I worked on was putting a CD together for a band. For lack of a better term, I was the PM and was involved with finding and booking the recording studio, finding an artist for the CD cover, getting the CDs copied and packaged. So I know how much work does into the music world even on a small local scale. Scope creep was at every step of the way. According to the video, “Monitoring Projects” (Walden University, 2010), Dr. Stolovich offers 5 practical tips for projects that would have helped me. These tips and the one you mentioned would have been good ones for me to use.

    Thanks for sharing your example of scope creep.

    Dean

    Reference
    Video Program: “Monitoring Projects” Walden University, 2010

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  2. Hi Carlos,

    Great example. For anyone who knows the intricacies of music there is a great deal of time and planning other than just playing a song. Scope creep is a nice term for all of the stuff that probably went on with the project. Dr. Stolovich stated it well when he said "Be flexible in the route you choose while you keep you eye on the destination".

    John

    Reference:

    Video Program: “Project Management Concerns: Establishing Workflow”, Walden University, 2010

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello Carlos,

    What an amazing experience and I am sure you learned a lot along the way. Did you have success with getting the CD completed , what would you do differently next time? From my experience, it is hard to be the PM and also the client working on one project. Depending on the size of the project, there could be several PM and stake holders working on one project. Many times you deal with everyone's input and, "when scope changes are unavoidable, the project manager should identify their impact on the project plan" (Lynch & Roecker, 2007) and share it with everyone to determine the next steps.

    Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge. Copyright by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC via the Copyright Clearance Center.

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