Scope Creep?

In one of my earlier blog entries I described a project I was involved with while volunteering with a former employer—a very small, charitable, non-profit organization that seeks to end domestic violence in the State of Illinois. The project was the organization’s annual fundraising event, a glitzy, evening gala featuring hors d’oeuvres, an open bar, live music, a raffle and a silent auction.

A gala committee, comprised of board members and others, was put together during the initial phases of the project. During one of the first meetings of the gala committee—still the concept phase, a board member suggested that the group seek out local celebrity chefs for a “friendly competition among chefs,” an idea that was met with much enthusiasm and excitement. The board member making the suggestion happily volunteered to recruit two or more chefs to participate in the event, whom she felt confident in securing. Well…six months into the project plan and we still had no celebrity chefs contracted. What we had was one chef who expressed a small bit of interest in the event – no real commitment at all.

As mentioned, the organization is very small and had a very small event budget. The amount allocated to food and drinks was as close to zero as you can get, since the budget was developed with the expectation that all wine and alcoholic beverages would be donated (as they had been in the past). Our expectation that the celebrity chefs would donate the food items they prepared at the event was also well-founded, given the fact that such chefs had done so in past years for other non-profit organizations.

Seventy-two hours prior to the event and we had only one chef confirmed. We decided to quickly contact the venue hosting our event; we scrambled to develop a menu to supplement what our sole celebrity chef was donating. This dilemma may not qualify exactly as being an example of scope creep since scope creep is generally thought to be the “natural tendency of the client, as well as project team members to try to improve the project’s output, as the project progresses” (Portny et al, 2008. P.346). However, according to Lynch & Roecker, scope creep “is a major cause of cost and time overrun” (2007, p.96 ). And so it was for this project…except that we might want to label this dilemma “scope retreat” instead of scope creep, since we had to scale way back in terms of our hopes of having a competition. And we had to add a very significant amount to our budget’s food allocation in order to make up for the losses in donated hors d’oeuvres and other edibles.

Looking back on how we could have handled this differently…. Everyone was very well-intentioned and tried their best. Perhaps a well-thought through contingency plan would have been appropriate. But so sure was our board member in her ability to secure local chefs that we never truly considered a “Plan B.” Mistake on our part? Definitely. A costly one? You bet! Did we learn from this? Absolutely. We should always allocate a contingency amount for an event—you never know if an expected donation will actually come through.


References

Lynch, M. M., & Roecker, J. (2007). Project managing e-learning: A handbook for successful design, delivery, and management. London: Routledge.

Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., & Sutton, M. (2008). Project Management in Practice: planning, scheduling and controlling projects. Third edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.