Question

The project manager receives yet another suggestion from their boss to add to the project's scope. Earlier requests were easy to address. They cost little in time, effort or money so the project manager simply addressed it within the team by calling in favors and working a few extra hours. This latest request from the boss is substantial. It comes as a result of seeing the great results your team has produced so far. This new suggestion has potential for great competitive advantage, but is well outside the scope of the existing project. The project manager to-date has simply absorbed any additions to scope.

What should the project manager do now? Will this project ever end? Are the project team members being punished for their good work?

Answer 1

Such situations are very common in organizations and projects where the expectation level of the management increase because of the huge success of the project but sometimes the managers should understand that things should be within the scope of the project or else the project may actually start declining. In such a situation as a project manager it is my duty to convey the message to the management and make them understand the consequences that may occur due to such issues. The management needs to be conveyed that if such things continue employee will start getting demotivated and may feel that they are being punished because of their success and this will affect the performance of the employees involved. The importance of timeline needs to be conveyed to the management and anyways we have been continuing the project more than what we estimated because of the success which sure fine but we cannot continue doing the same thing just because we are good at it. We need to explore new initiatives and challenges and employees prefer such attitude in an organization.