Being that I am an educator, I cannot think of any good examples of how scope creep reared its ugly head and became a problem in a project that I was working on. The best example I can come up with is recently when I worked on our Professional Development Committee and we developed a three-day inservice schedule for our teachers that took place this past week. This committee is responsible for scheduling different workshops and providing a schedule for each teacher to follow. I have been a member of this committee for the past three years, and never has it ever been this difficult. Granted, we usually work on one day at a time, but this year the district planned the inservice to be three days in a row instead of three days throughout the year.

Portny et al (2008) says that scope creep is unavoidable, but there are things we can do to make it manageable. My committee and I made the mistake of letting others make too many changes. We always let the supervisors and principals make requests prior to us beginning the planning process. However, this time they were making changes right up until the end. There were changes made on a daily basis, and with seven different schools involved, it was very difficult for our committee to keep track of all the changes that were being made. It was the most stressful inservice scheduling that I have ever been involved in. Too many people gave their input, made changes, and denied changes that we made.

For this process to be successful and to run smoothly, the planning should have been left to the committee. We gave professional courtesy to supervisors and principals, but in the long run, it made our jobs way more difficult. In addition to trying to keep up with everything going on, it also added a great deal of time to our project. Ideally, this schedule should be done a week before the inservice begins, but this time we were still making changes the first day of the inservices.

If we had a change control system in place, this process may have been more manageable for us. Additionally, if we would have said no to certain requests, or not allowed others to deny our changes, this process may have gone more smoothly. Needless to say, on Friday when the last workshop session had concluded, I felt a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. In evaluating the process, I have learned several things that I will remember for next year.

Now I know this is not the ideal example of scope creep, but it is the closest thing a vice principal will face.


Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.