(How to resist the temptation to “boil the ocean”)

The most common reason for software project failure is not failure to control budget or schedule but failure to control requirements, either at the outset or during the build phase. Software projects are unlike those that deliver a tangible product such as a building, a bridge, or a dam. These projects receive much more attention during the planning phase and tend to be controlled with much more rigor than are software projects. You’ll never hear of a plan to build a 20,000 square foot shoe store ballooning into a project to build a 10 acre shopping mall! Yet that’s exactly what happens to a lot of software projects. They start off with one objective in mind but after the last stakeholder has added his or her wish list they bear no resemblance to the original vision. I call this dispersion of focused effort “ocean boiling”. It’s not an original term but I think it fits this situation perfectly. Attempts to boil the ocean will expend a great deal of heat without changing the sea state. Attempts to deliver an extensive wish list of software features will spend a great deal of cash without changing the business.

Failure to maintain a narrow focus on the original objective of the project leads to overruns of both schedule and budget. I’m using the original budget and schedule here as we frequently see projects which have their budget and schedule changed during the course of the project, using the appropriate change management processes labeled as cost overruns and late deliveries based on their deviation from the original plan. Clearly, whether these projects are “on budget” and “on schedule” is a debatable point. The real point here is that a certain degree of deviation from the original budget and schedule is acceptable but when the scope of a project experiences a significant increase budget and schedule are sure to increase beyond what all stakeholders will find acceptable. Think how many times you’ve read or heard about overruns on government projects in the media. The media rarely mentions whether these “overruns” are the result of approved change requests; their only point of reference is the originally announced schedule and budget and anything more is an overrun. You may not be working on a government project but it is still important to curtail project scope for the organization you are working for.

This article is not meant to be a comprehensive course on scope management, merely to offer a few helpful tips that will help you avoid managing a project that is perceived by your stakeholders to overrun budget and schedule. Those of you who haven’t invested in project management certification should take a good PMP course or other PMP exam preparation training product and get certified. Doing so will give you all the tools and techniques you’ll need to manage your project’s scope. In the meantime, here a few tips you can start using right away. Read the rest of this entry »