Strikes and scope

ByElizabeth Harrin Last updated: Project scope

The office is going into emergency mode at the moment in preparation for crippling strikes tomorrow. We’ve received flyers from the unions, an email from HR about how to get to work despite there being only 37% service on some lines. How the RATP have calculated their service that precisely I’m not sure, but given the amount of civil servants in France there is probably a department somewhere to do just that.

Spending time stuck at the bus stop or on a bus will give me some time to plan my presentation at the BCS on 11 May about managing project scope. Reading through some of the notes I have already made there are only a very few key points to bear in mind. Scope management is not complicated, but it is flexible which is probably why we feel so uncomfortable about doing it. As I see it, the pitfalls are:

  • The mental model mismatch
  • Making unfounded assumptions, and
  • Scope creep.

The way to handle these and not get caught out is to:

  • Involve users in scope definition
  • Have a good risk and issue management process
  • Manage changes
  • Keep the project as small as possible and use proof of concept and piloting where you can.

I am going to expand these thoughts for the presentation, and if anything useful comes out of it I’ll share it here.

Elizabeth Harrin wearing a pink scarf

Project manager, author, mentor

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years.
Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects.