Category Archives: Project Management

Project Feature Creep

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Professional Speaker Jeffrey W. Drake has made presentations on subjects such as communication styles, creative problem solving, goal setting, leadership, project management, stress management, teamwork, and time management.This article is the fourth in an occasional series on project creep. The focus of this article is on feature creep, something closely related to scope creep.

Our custom-designed “Project Management: From Concept to Completion” seminar contains many basic tools for project managers. A topic area that seminar participant can easily relate to is project creep.

There are many excellent books on project management available in the marketplace. One particular book, Effective Project Management by Wysocki, Beck, and Crane, very clearly addresses the project creep area and focuses on the topic of feature creep.

In the previous article on project scope creep, you will see a brief description of scope creep. Feature creep is the same as scope creep except that feature creep is initiated by the provider rather than the client. When I was involved in a software design project, the programmers or systems analysts would think of a new feature or service not indicated in the project requirements. One of the team members decides to include a little extra feature because it adds value to the project and the end user. The client didn’t ask for the feature or service but they get the feature anyway.

About Jeffrey W. Drake

Jeffrey W. Drake, Ph.D., is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Jeff has made presentations ranging from leadership to empowered teams and project management to communication styles for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, and manufacturing. For more information on Jeff's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Project Effort Creep

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Professional Speaker Jeffrey W. Drake has made presentations on subjects such as communication styles, creative problem solving, goal setting, leadership, project management, stress management, teamwork, and time management.Our custom-designed “Project Management: From Concept to Completion” seminar contains many basic tools for project managers. Project managers have many challenges to deal with. One area of challenges frequently addressed is that of project creep.

There are many excellent books on project management available in the marketplace. One particular book, Effective Project Management by Wysocki, Beck, and Crane, very clearly addresses the project creep area and focuses on the topic of effort creep.

If you have managed any projects, you probably have experienced effort creep. This is the project that is 95 percent complete. Yet, the project seems to attract delays just like a magnet. The project continues to be incomplete no matter how much effort and resources are expended.

Every status report records progress but the amount remaining doesn’t seem to decrease proportionately. The law of diminishing returns has surely set in. A project team meeting may be an effective strategy in dealing with effort creep. The project manager and project team members need to get creative in their problem solving to bring the project to completion.

About Jeffrey W. Drake

Jeffrey W. Drake, Ph.D., is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Jeff has made presentations ranging from leadership to empowered teams and project management to communication styles for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, and manufacturing. For more information on Jeff's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Project Hope Creep

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Professional Speaker Jeffrey W. Drake has made presentations on subjects such as communication styles, creative problem solving, goal setting, leadership, project management, stress management, teamwork, and time management.Our custom-designed “Project Management: From Concept to Completion” seminar contains many basic tools for project managers. Project managers have many challenges to deal with. One area of challenges frequently addressed is that of project creep.

There are many excellent books on project management in the marketplace. One particular book, Effective Project Management by Wysocki, Beck, and Crane, very clearly addresses the project creep area and in particular the topic of hope creep.

Project management is much more than procedures. Effective project managers know how to work with the people in their project team. Hope creep can be a major problem for the project manager. A project manager may assign team members to be activity managers within the project.

Team members are typically nice people, and they may not want to give the project manager any bad news about the slow progress. The team members “hope” they can catch up by the next report period or project team meeting to be back on schedule. As a result, the project manager needs to check the accuracy of the status reports and closely monitor progress at project team meetings.

About Jeffrey W. Drake

Jeffrey W. Drake, Ph.D., is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Jeff has made presentations ranging from leadership to empowered teams and project management to communication styles for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, and manufacturing. For more information on Jeff's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Project Scope Creep

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Professional Speaker Jeffrey W. Drake has made presentations on subjects such as communication styles, creative problem solving, goal setting, leadership, project management, stress management, teamwork, and time management.The AchieveMax® company has been presenting custom-designed seminars for clients all over North America for more than 25 years. About ten years ago, one of our clients requested us to develop a custom-designed “Project Management: From Concept to Completion” seminar for their specific needs. After developing that initial seminar, we have since custom designed that seminar for numerous clients.

We are constantly updating our seminars to add value for our clients. A recent request from one of our clients was to focus in on project scope. There are many excellent books on project management in the marketplace. One particular book, Effective Project Management by Wysocki, Beck, and Crane, very clearly addressed the topic of project scope creep.

The authors stated that “Change is constant” and “to expect otherwise is unrealistic.” We certainly know that since our most popular seminar program is “Productive Chaos: Riding the Wave of Change.” With chaotic change occurring in the marketplace, companies and organizations need to maintain and improve their productivity.

The authors add that “changes occur for several reasons.” Some examples of change are that “market conditions can be dynamic” and “competitors can introduce new services.” As a project manager, you have to deal with the changes. This can be a real challenge for a project manager because you may already have your schedule and budget approved by senior management. Now you may be faced with responding to a competitor’s newly introduced product or service. It is essential that you partner with senior management and inform them of the new competitive product and/or service. By partnering with senior management, you can decide if you should revise your project, including the schedule and budget, to deal with these competitive changes.

About Jeffrey W. Drake

Jeffrey W. Drake, Ph.D., is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Jeff has made presentations ranging from leadership to empowered teams and project management to communication styles for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, and manufacturing. For more information on Jeff's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Five Tips for Wedding Project Management

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web marketing and communications consultant Melanie L. DrakeIn the description for our custom-designed, on-site project management seminar, we mention that everyone, at some point, manages a project, whether it’s a wedding, a student project, or a home-improvement project. Because of this description, we often see searches for “wedding project management” in our web statistics. 

Having recently planned a wedding, I’d like to share five tips that may be of benefit to those just starting to plan their wedding day.

  1. Buy a round-ring binder and a set of at least eight tabs. You can find these at OfficeDepot, OfficeMax, or Staples. Although I used a one-inch binder, I would strongly recommend at least a two-inch binder. (The bigger the wedding, the bigger the binder should be.) Even though I would have preferred keeping everything on the computer, the notebook was a necessity as I gathered paperwork from each potential vendor. You will be carrying this binder around everywhere, including your wedding day. (Believe me, I ended up needing it because the caterer misplaced our food order, and the maid of honor had to call to see why the food hadn’t been delivered to the reception hall when we arrived. We did call the day before the wedding to make sure that everything was set, and they somehow lost the order during those 24 hours.)
  2. My favorite online wedding resource is the Wedding Channel. It includes a well-defined, online check list that shows you what should be completed by a certain time in your project management time line. It also includes a guest list manager, which helps you keep track of who is attending and the gifts you have received. The site also has a budget calculator, which helps you stay within your budget. Moreover, if you’re interested, you can receive information from local wedding-related vendors; I actually did not find any of my vendors in this way since most of the “local” vendors were at least an hour away from where we wanted to have the wedding.
  3. The Knot is also an excellent resource when planning your wedding. I preferred the Wedding Channel overall, but this site also has the online check list, the guest list manager, a budget calculator, and a wedding web page. (The pop-up ads are annoying at The Knot, and I was also annoyed that they continued to market to me with newlywed information after my wedding.)
  4. Bridal BargainsI would highly recommend reading Bridal Bargains if you are on a limited budget. There is also a web site for Bridal Bargains. My original plans for my wedding gown were scrapped when I read this book, and I ended up buying a beautiful yet inexpensive wedding gown that received rave reviews from those attending the wedding.
  5. DIY Bride (Do-It-Yourself Bride) is another excellent resource. It contains a download section, which I found particularly useful because of yet another checklist that I downloaded to keep in my notebook as well as a template for the web site we used for our wedding information.

The most surprising thing I learned from planning a wedding is that the vendors expect that the bride is the one in charge. At the chapel, the bride was always listed as the contact person and not the groom. Also, I know very little about photography while my husband does, and yet the photographer’s assistant continued to call me with questions.

One thing to note is that no matter how much you plan, things do go wrong. For example, the construction on my original reception hall was delayed, which made the hall unavailable for my wedding reception; I didn’t learn of this construction until after the invitations were printed. The food, as noted earlier, was two-hours late and cold; I knew the time line so well that we just cut and then served the wedding cake.  So, when things go wrong at your wedding, let them eat cake!

About Melanie L. Drake

Melanie L. Drake focuses on the publishing and marketing sides of the AchieveMax® company. AchieveMax® professional, motivational speakers provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services on change management, creativity, customer service, leadership, project management, time management, teamwork, and more. For more information on AchieveMax® custom-designed seminars and keynote presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.