Top Tips from an Awarding Winning Technical Architect: Dennis McPeak

I wanted to give you a heads-up on an upcoming interview with Dennis McPeak, Technical Architect with RBC Financial Group, since he provides some excellent tips for IT managers. Dennis and his team won the Project Team of the Year Award from Computing Canada announced online in January of this year.

 

Here’s our discussion on scope creep:

SI: What are your top five recommendations for keeping a lid on scope creep?

DM: For any reader not yet familiar with scope creep – beware! In my estimation, this is the death knell for all large projects. Born out of my experience on this recent project, my recommendations for keeping a lid on scope creep (or change requests) are as follows:

  1. Capture important information related to the impact on:
    • Business Cases
    • Functional Designs
    • Technical Designs
    • Plans and Schedules
  1. Create a formal process to manage scope creep that includes the following step-wise approach to the change requests:
    • Initiation
    • Analysis
    • Review
    • Approval
    • Implementation
  2. Determine the impact of each change request to the requirements in terms of design, cost and schedule. Review the impact among a representative counsel of project participants. Broad representation is important as a significant change request may affect multiple or all participants and sponsors.
  3. For significant deferrable change requests, consider a Phase 2 and Phase 3 approach. As each phase will require a separate design, cost and schedule, it will keep the original project on track.
  4. Make the process very public. A public process compels any individual that makes a change request to champion the change, defend its impact and take responsibility for the impact on the overall project.

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Look for the interview to appear early next week!

 

Cheers,

Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P., sibaraki@cips.ca