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The Magical Number 3
Scope is where projects in education go to die
A few weeks ago, I was introduced to the three-legged stool of project management. Given my life in NGSS-aligned science instruction, I love a good three-legged stool analogy, so I was primed to pick this one up. The project management stool has legs of cost, schedule, and scope. As per stool logic, to have a successful project, these three legs need to be roughly equal. Otherwise, the project falls over.
It’s been instructive for me to apply this model to considering the various projects that occupy my school’s attentions. I’m fortunate to work in a place where cost is not a significant consideration (particularly if we’re only considering material costs, and not things like people’s time). Schedule is similarly flexible for almost every non-facilities-based project. Neither of these seem to be big issues for my school. Instead, almost without exception, the problems that develop in our projects are ones of scope.
What is Scope?
When I’m talking about scope here, I mean what Wikipedia means:
In project management, scope is the defined features and functions of a product, or the scope of work needed to finish a project.
