This week we learned about the general topics that need monitoring and controlling. Out of all the groups on the list, which do you think are the hardest to change after a project has started? Has anyone had any experience in this? I know a lot would depend on how far along the project is and where the project was occurring. In my limited experience from a capstone project, the hardest two obstacles to overcome were funding/ budget problems and schedule issues. If I had to pick one, the hardest to fix was the scheduling problems, as when something needed to be completed by a deadline there is no other way to change this; the project deadline just needed to be met. I do not have any industry experience but would be curious to hear about anyone who has!
In project management, the most common aspects that need monitoring and controlling include: schedule, budget, resources, performance, and scope. From my experience during capstone, budget and resources were obtainable but they required networking or applying for additional grants which hindered productivity and caused delays in the schedule. The funding available also largely influenced the scope of the project. Similarly, from working in the healthcare industry, I have seen projects get delayed by several months if funds were not immediately available. Therefore, I believe that the available budget and resources are the greatest determinants of a projects success and requires the most oversight to ensure they are used efficiently as they can lead to negative variance in other aspects of the project as outlined above. Curious to hear if others agree.
I feel like of those aspects listed by my fellow classmates that the hardest to change as the original comment asks would be the scope. This is because widening the scope over the course of the project can require more work to be done to spread out to those areas not originally covered in the project. This can be quite difficult later into a project where many of the earlier steps must now be repeated for this increased scope. Decreasing the scope however is easier since it is essentially just trimming down on unnecessary parts of the project.
I agree that scope would be the hardest to change primarily because all the other aspects tend to decided upon based on what the scope is. For example, if you change the scope to include another component or feature then this would also result in the schedule, budget, and resources requiring changing. By expanding the scope the project would require the schedule to be extended and additional funds and resources may be required. Therefore, while the other aspects can be individually changed, changing the scope would likely also effect the other aspects.
I agree to most posts above that the hardest thing to change once the project onsets is changing the scope. The rest is hard too but like @devdesai said, this results in changing all other factors- schedule, budget, resources, performance etc. If really needed, you can always adjust budget accordingly unless big changes happen. If scopes are changed, then many work done previously may become obsolete or like cb447 said- scheduling resources, etc. will need to be revaluated to meet the new scopes. Even though each of those aspect are very crucial for a successful accomplishment of a project, I believe changing scopes is the hardest since it makes every other aspects harder.
I believe that the project scope/goal is the hardest portion of a project to change. Funding, scheduling and resource allocation are all very difficult to change after a project has started as well, but these factors are all directly tied to the project scope. If the scope changes, initial funding might not align with the project idea and the people assigned may have less relevance after the change. This would result in essentially starting the project all over again assuming that funding could remain in place.
In terms of what's hardest to change once the project has started would have to be the budget, in my opinion. Monetary resources are hard to come by at times and this is why it is imperative to stay on task and within reason.
As stated above, the common aspects that fall under monitoring and controlling are schedule, budget, resources, performance, and scope. While I do agree with the other responses in this thread, I would like to put more emphasis on how performance can be both one of the hardest and one of the easiest aspects to change. I say it can be easy because it can be a lack of communication problem on why the performance of the team is not doing as well as it should. Perhaps the deadlines were too lenient and that caused a slight lack of productivity. With precise and careful communication, the overall performance of the team can basically change overnight on certain occasions. Moreover, I say it can be one of the hardest aspects to change in the case that the group is struggling with new ideas or developments that can help push the project further. If the most that the team is doing is still underperforming, it can be near impossible to increase the performance. Unless some kind of breakthrough happens, some performances cannot be changed so easily and just communicating will most likely not make the biggest of differences.
