Managing Scope Creep

However well defined your SOW document, however detailed your SRS document, some amount of scope creep is inevitable during the development phase of a software project. When a customer previews the system that is being developed, they are bound to come up with new ideas on how a particular module, report or web page should look. Of course, a strong project manager or project sponsor would try and negotiate a corresponding increase in either the budget or schedule or both, in which case, the increase in scope would be treated as an acceptable change request. But if the customer is a VIP client, or if your initial project documents were not specific enough about the scope, you end up having to accept the changes and work them into your schedule and budget. Your best best in such a case is to try and minimize the impact of the scope creep, especially on the confidence of the development team. You could do this by asking the customer to prioritize the changes and ask your team to target only the high priority items at first. At the same time, you would have to negotiate with the customer and set reasonable and realistic expectations about the timely completion of the changes. Most customers would be willing to concede some extra days for low priority changes, beyond the implementation date of the project. Of course, keeping the team engaged for longer on one project could affect the schedules of other future engagements. But, as a project manager, you would still end up having made the best of a bad situation

Virtual Employees

An article in yesterday's (1st June 2012) issue of The Economic Times exhorts organizations to find ways to connect with their virtual employees. The author Abhijit Bhaduri, the chief learning officer at Wipro, stresses that virtual workers do not only mean employees working in another country or city and in fact could be people working in an office just across the road. The plight of such employees typify the saying "out of sight, out of mind". There is no emotional connect with the leader, the team and even the organization. This results in a major drop in employee engagement, which may ultimately result in higher attrition levels

Having seen this first-hand in my last company, I cannot help but agree with Mr. Bhaduri. The top bosses of our Business Unit were based in Bangalore and rarely visited Mumbai. Obviously they would interact more often with Bangalore team members, in the hallways and cafeterias, than with employees at other centers. As a result, even the most minor achievements of Bangalore staff got recognized at the highest levels in the organization, whereas their Mumbai counterparts would slave away all year only to receive "average" ratings and infrequent promotions. This resulted in many Mumbai team members attempting to leave the BU, and when that did not work out due to headcount politics, opting to leave the organization itself

The lesson here for all leaders having virtual employees is to try and personally interact with them as often as possible, even if they work at multiple offices across various locations. Making employees feel wanted and appreciated is the best way to keep them engaged. Bhaduri reminds organizations to use technology, process guidelines and informal rewards to ensure that virtual workers have what he calls "a share of mind, voice and wallet"