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We are pushing toward the finish of this Incident Reporting System project. I’m working the Punchlist with my Client PM counterpart, and we are knocking items off faster than they are coming on.

Initially, the Punchlist is a bit depressing. It balloons to a large number of items, and the item count growth seems to run ahead of your speed in checking them off. But, the new items go to a trickle, and it turns out that many of the items are formatting items, and can be addressed in a few minutes. So, whole groups of items come off the Punchlist every day.

But then we hit a snag. A change to a group of reports required data not currently collected by the system. I maintained that the change was out of scope. The Client said that the change was consistent with reporting examples provided by one of the User groups, and, in any case, this User group wanted that reporting capability.

At this point I got up on my Rock, my Strong Place. I stood firmly on the Data Design that the Client had signed off on weeks ago. The Data Design that I had described in writing as being scope-defining for subsequent changes. The change suggested required changes to a data table, changes to the User interface, and re-running of test cases. I said that we would be happy to make the change, and estimated the man hours required to do so, and the probable impact on the schedule.

Faced with my resolute defense of the project scope, the change was documented as an issue, and pushed-off to a subsequent maintenance phase.

The lesson: The Data Design is a good place to make your stand on scope issues. Data changes are black or white – two parties can agree on whether a functional change requires a Data Design change. Data changes tend to ripple through the project causing other changes, and retesting. And, the smart Project Manager will get a signoff on the Data Design early in the project, and confirm that this will be a basis for evaluating in or out of scope.

Standing on the solid high ground of the Data Design, shielded by my No-U-Turns Punchlist, I was rapidly approaching completion of this project.