Scope Creep

Scope Creep is the tendency for projects to become bigger and bigger. Even when the project scope is well defined, many information technology projects suffer from scope creep” (Schwalbe, 2010).

Scope creep more frequently occurs during the later stages of a project, such as programming and testing, than during the earlier stages, such as design. Changes may happen in the later stages as the project team gains more knowledge of the problem and solution. If a project takes longer than anticipated to complete due to scope changes, then it will take longer before the benefits can be realized. Additional cost and delayed benefits will result in a lower return of investment.

Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) Case Study

The Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) provides tissue collection service to distribute human tissues to researchers across the United States. CHTN used a distributed model of six geographically stand-alone FoxPro database with a visual basic interface to store investigator's tissue requests. FoxPro database information storing method was dependent upon the data entry personnel at the individual divisional level. In 2000 CHTN contracted an outside developer to update the FoxPro based system that would include more data elements. This contractor worked on the updates till early 2004. However, requirements were not clearly defined and the software never reached production use due to scope creep, changes in software development personnel, and organizational issues. In June, 2004 CHTN initiated a new project with a two-day workshop in June 2004, with at least one person at the coordinator level from each division to define the minimum set of data elements and the minimum functionality to migrate to a new product. The objective of this project is to change from FoxPro databases, in use for almost 20 years, to a centralized web-based system with an Oracle backend relational database. Shift to this new system had a major impact on their data...