Technology moves at a fast pace, but will never be able to keep up with the human mind. After all, even technology takes a break once in a while. It comes as no surprise that timelines, scope, and other such project attributes often expand and even contract from time to time. So the challenge, of course, becomes how can we communicate difficult topics while maintaining cohesion within the project team? And what can we do to plan ahead to avoid potential pitfalls?
Slow Trigger, Fast Bullet
Time and again, we see how important it is to have proper project definition at the time of kick-off. While development can sometimes be performed rapidly, having a strong sense of objective and design is the key to preventing scope creep and keeping the project on track. Taking the extra effort as a team to truly understand the needs and the approaches to satisfy them will ensure much faster development and clearer communication. When definitions are hazy or haphazardly designed, the results can lead to inefficient user experiences or buggy products.
The Customer is Always Right
As an organization that recognizes our success is only as great as our clients’ success, we also recognize that process improvement opportunities emerge throughout the stages of development and create potential changes in requirements. As such, strong solution providers will do what it takes to adhere to those improvements and properly communicate to the team the full impact:
- What is the cost of these improvements from not only a monetary standpoint, but in consideration to timeline?
- What can be planned for in terms of resource capacity?
- How are stakeholders going to be affected by a timeline extension?
- How are other aspects of the project going to be affected?
These are questions that will be helpful in prioritizing the need. By analyzing and evaluating these impacts we can maintain an open discourse and further solidify trust between client and solution provider and keep that scope creep at bay.
MCFTech excels at keeping the scope creep at bay – contact us today and we can help you with your business application needs.