The Scope Creep

As a professional (and certified) Project Manager, I know that one of the most vexing tasks that we PMs have is to prevent runaway projects – those that go beyond their original scope.   

Allowing projects to mushroom into something beyond the original intent is asking for cost and schedule overruns and quality issues and can starve other projects for resources.  This usually doesn’t happen in one or two grand expansions of the project; it is an insidious process of adding “just this one thing”, over and over again.  Accordingly, in my business we deem it “scope creep”.  On some projects, PMs have (privately) attached the fun moniker of “Scope Creep” to actual stakeholders who are the drivers of this phenomenon.

So what happens when I start a rather ambitious project at home?  Do I apply the usual measures to limit scope creep, such as a clearly defined statement of scope and purpose, a change control procedure and periodic reviews of “what did we intend / where are we now”?

Old garden area and bad lawn

Heck no.  As good as I am in controlling scope change in my professional life, in my private life, where I am project manager, team and stakeholder, I am The Scope Creep.  Case in point: my back yard.

My wife and I have lived in this house for almost 14 years. Our property is about one third dense woods, with the rest given to what can be very loosely termed as a “lawn”.  We aren’t manicured lawn people, but our back yard in particular had become ugly, the drainage patterns encouraged erosion and there were a few trees that threatened to ruin our day if they toppled in a storm and hit the house.  So this summer we decided to do something about it.  I came up with a pretty simple scope: the removal of a few dead/dying trees, grinding some old tree stumps, some resloping and topsoil and a few bags of grass seed.  That was my initial project scope.  Accordingly, I called some tree people and some lawn/landscaping people for estimates.

(Side note: Do these businesses want work?  My response rate on calling tree services was 50%; on landscapers, it was 25%.  “Call every potential customer back within a day” is a pretty basic way to get business and drive goodwill, even if you are too busy at the moment or the job is too small. I just don’t get it.)

The tree people I selected planned to bring in a sizeable crane to deal with the big one; a 60 or 70’ tulip poplar that could take out the half of the house it was leaning towards if it happened to fall.  But to bring in a crane, they would have to clear out some other small trees and brush on the side of the house for access.  Enter the Scope Creep.  Since they were going to have to do that, and since the machines were going to be there, why not clear a 25’ swath of gnarly small trees and thorn bushes right up the side of the yard? It was such a small change.  Hardly added cost at all, and added no time.  And we’d have a bigger back and side yard. This made us happy. (Note: they still couldn't get the crane in because the ground was too soft, so they felled it the old fashioned and scary way. A cool video of that here.)

Also, since they were going to be there with cool machines and skilled tree people, there was another tulip poplar that was a potential problem, that dead tree just off the yard that was leaning on another one, and about a dozen small locusts (which are designed, it seems, to grow fast and tall and then fall over) that we could be rid of.  By the time all the little changes were included, the bill grew to about 150% of the original estimate (it was still just a day’s work for the crew).  And now (with little surprise) we had a significantly larger area that needed to be filled, sloped and seeded.

Enter the landscapers.  One of the bidders had suggested redoing the borders around our garden areas; a somewhat miserable-looking collection of large and small rocks surrounded them and they were sinking into the ground and near impossible to trim around.  We had redone these once in the past and they looked good for about 2 years before the weeds found their way through them, the mower bumped them all out of position and they sank even deeper into the ground.  I loathe plastic borders (they look even worse) so the solution was natural or manufactured stone cobbles or walls.  This was a clear leap in scope, so I decided to mitigate the impact with a simple concept – I would do them myself.   

Garden border layout

And since we’re redoing them, shouldn’t the gardens be a bit bigger? And include the small garden in the back of the shed that was bordered with cinder block?  Of course. You get the idea - I started shopping for stone and put the landscape company off for a few weeks so that we could get the gardens done first.

Enter the garden project.  This took three weeks and naturally was done during scorching heat.  We selected a manufactured product, a Belgian-block imitation called “Belgik” by Techo-Bloc.  Two pallets with 120 stones each, a total of about 200 lineal feet and 5,000 pounds. Add numerous bags of paver base material and leveling sand. We laid out borders, we trenched, we laid block, we backfilled.

Building the patio ramp

Laying stone

And while we’re at it, let’s add a nice patio/ramp from our wooden deck walkway to the yard, where grass is difficult to grow and I need to run our tractor over.  Some bluestone that was in the yard, some new bluestone, more base, more sand, a few more days of work in the heat.

And what’s a landscape job without some nice landscape lighting? 14 low-voltage lights, about 300’ of cable, a transformer / timer (and don’t forget to add the weather-protected receptacle for it)!

Landscape light

And after the garden borders were laid we had about 30 blocks leftover so…

The garden bench

Why not build a garden bench? A bag of mortar, some pressure-treated 2x4s, and an afternoon later, we had a nice bench.  Which needed a pathway extension, so a few more 1’x1’ bluestone pavers.  And more paver base and leveling sand.

And yes, a few more pavers and some old fenceposts will make a nice surround for the hose bib and rack at the side of the house.

And we had these leftover cinder blocks, which will make a nice landing for the basement doors at the side of the house.

Hose station

Basement landing

And since we’re at the side of the house, I noticed that erosion of the ground around the foundation piers for our back deck threatened to undermine them. That would be bad. The solution? Of course – a retaining wall. Back to the lumber yard for pressure treated 2x6s, use a few more old fence posts, and add 4 bags of high-strength concrete for the posts and a deadman support, 8 bags of gravel for drainage behind the wall. At this point, I’m racing the landscape contractor, who had started with the clearing and brought in 60 yards of topsoil.

Retaining wall before/after

Path to the bench

And while they were clearing and ripping out some remaining big roots from the 70’ poplar, an unpleasant (but ultimately fortuitous) surprise – they tore up an old rain leader pipe that went from the downspout on the back corner of the house to… somewhere. That somewhere was now buried under new topsoil, as was its pair on the front corner of the house.  These needed to be replaced – they were both blocked up with dirt anyway, probably from before we bought the house. Back to Home Depot for pipe, and scheming a way to terminate them at the edge of the new lawn area. The contractor was nice enough to come make trenches for me, so I laid the pipe. 6 more bags of concrete and some ugly concrete forms later, I had some nice drain blocks at the edge of the yard also, just as the contractor was seeding.

Drain block

Oops.

Laying drain piping

Top it off with 10 yards of hardwood mulch in the gardens, and we were “done”.  Outside of buying a few more hoses, sprinklers, and a sprinkler controller/timer so we weren’t scrambling around all day turning sprinklers on and off.

At this point, a bit of reflection is in order. Some conclusions:

• I certainly could have planned most of this out in advance.  The only thing that was a real surprise was the drain piping.  The rest was quite foreseeable, or simply opportunistic.
• This did not meet our schedule or budget goals, but we did have the time and the money to do it.  But I’m very happy that I have (or developed) the skills needed to do a lot of it myself; it would have broken the bank to have pros do it all.
• I suppose I did have a scope change control process after all – it was just me, nodding my head. Not as robust as some, but it was a process.  And I did think about every decision. The sponsor ended up happy.
• I’m glad I did all of it.  The grass is starting to grow now and the yard and gardens look fabulous.  And the folks at my local hardware store and Home Depot enjoyed the ride too.

Please share your stories and suggestions about home improvement scope creep – I know I’m not alone here!

Now we need some plants for the expanded gardens. Don’t even get me started.