Pinnacle Business Solutions is providing key elements of a successful project through a Project Management Success Six-Part Series. While basic in nature, these elements are critical and can help you successfully complete projects for your company.

1. Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com

2. Brandy shares her 15 years of experience in project
management and has created a six-part series highlighting
key elements to a projects success, specifically in the IT
management industry.
Brandy Semore, Pinnacle’s Operations Manager
Follow these actionable steps and advice to help you
improve the outcome of projects you lead or
participate in at your organization.
Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com

3. Project Management
Success: Part 5

4. SCOPE CREEP
What is Scope Creep?
Scope creep can be described as the uncontrolled changes or
continuous growth in a project's scope. This can occur when the
scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or
controlled.
Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com

5. What Causes Scope Creep?
There are several reasons why projects experience this, but
in my personal experience of 15 years of project
management, I’ve narrowed down the key suspects to just
two:
● Weak project managers
● People pleasers
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6. A weak project manager has loosely defined customer
requirements, loosely defined scope, incomplete project plan,
and weak project monitoring.
Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com
Weak Project Managers

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People Pleasers
The downfall to people that are too eager to please the end user
occurs when working on additional tasks, despite not being
within scope. Here at Pinnacle, we call this “opening the hood.”
This can cause a project to be finished incorrectly.

8. We have guidelines for successful change management and
these guidelines are an integral part of our daily PMO business.
Here are the three guidelines we follow to help manage Scope
Creep.
Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com
Three Steps to Managing Scope Creep

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1. Define your Requirements
Clearly define everything up front.
You can only do this by first defining your
requirements.

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2. Write your Project Plan
Next, conquer the project plan.
As we discussed in Write your Project Plan, one of the
key goals for this deliverable is to manage scope.

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3. Define your Requirements
Once you execute your project – you have to actively
monitor it.
Reference your project plan every step during your
status meetings and in your status updates – ensure
others reference the plan throughout the project’s
lifecycle.

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Open Communication for Success
Open communication between our teams is
an integral part of our plans.
Discussing scope changes up front enables
all stakeholders to review and assess the
time, money, and dependencies involved in
adding any additional tasks.

13. Learn More
Have questions for Brandy? Email her at brandy.semore@pbsnow.com
Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com
Project Management Success: Part 6
Close Out Together