208 - TZL - Justin Smith

Randy Wilburn [9:17] You're totally speaking my language here. You've brought up a bunch of issues. Where would scope creep fall in all of this because that's always the buzzword that we all talk about when it comes to project management issues and challenges - how to avoid scope creep, that dreaded scope creep whenever we would bring that issue up. That was one of the outlying factors that most companies struggled with was how to address those issues both internally as well as externally. Justin Smith [9:50] It comes up everywhere. What I like to say is it's all about expectations management and you are working on any project you're working with expectations but you get to choose who sets them. You as the project manager can set the expectations or you can allow them to be set for you. And when it comes to something like scope creep, as simple as it might sound, the best way to address that is really just to put yourself in a position to have that conversation on the front end. And I think a big reason why scope creep is such a challenge for project managers is because they're either apprehensive or they don't know how to have that conversation proactively. So a lot of times it becomes a runaway train, and then by the time you've got to address it, it's uncomfortable, you've probably let it go on a little bit too long. But it really comes down to you wanting to be the one setting the expectations for the project so that you can put yourself in the driver's seat and have a pre-set solution to that problem when it comes up. But unfortunately, it comes up everywhere resource planning, communication, and leadership, they're all facets that enable scope creep to occur. Randy Wilburn [11:04] Again, I think part of the issue is just the awareness of it. And I think you said that word, it's the word that I always talk about managing expectations. A good project manager, as you said, has to manage the expectations of the client but then they also have to internally manage the expectations of everybody on their team. Are they giving enough time to each person? One of the things that I know is that Zweig has to unearth when doing a number of the surveys that they do, especially when they survey companies. And I remember doing this previously when we would go out and do any type of training, we would survey and when the surveys would always come back to us saying, hey, I work with our project managers but the challenges that we run into is that there's no active listening involved. There's no real communication. Everything is one-sided. They're not taking us by the hand to show us exactly what to do properly so that we won't make these mistakes in the future. And so, those are some of the challenges that we've seen over and over again, and this is old hat. This was happening in the 90s and I'm sure it was happening in the 80s before I got into the industry. I've been in

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