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This
week we are required to share an experience that reflects scope creep. At the school site that I teach, teachers are
divided into different types of clubs that assist with maintaining and ordering
school functions. One year I was assigned to work with a committee to organize the
annual book fair. The book fair at the site usually lasts four days, the last day
of the book fair the school also holds conference night. This allows parent s to visit the book fair as
well.
For the initial meetings, the committee
worked together to develop lists of resources needed to host the event. We
immediately noticed that the book fair would reflect a reduction in book circulation,
reduction in accelerated reader points, and scheduling of library classes. Allowing
students to read a variety of books at the school is very crucial because of
the high percentage of students living in poverty and high percentage of English
Language Learners. We decided to accommodate the reduction in circulation by reducing
the time allotted for library classes so that students would still be able to
visit the library to check in and check out books. This also addressed the
issue with reader points because students were given the opportunity to read
new books.
One
part of the book fair that the team overlooked was the amount of volunteers
needed to assist parents on parent night with purchasing books. The school site
has a low percentage of parent volunteers and due to conference night, many willing
parents were not able to assist due to their parent-teacher meetings. Not only
does a lack of volunteers make it difficult to assist parents but causes a low
return on investment in book sales. The amount of book sales for our school is
very important to receive books for the library because there is a limited
amount of resources for the school already. The Principal being the stakeholder
was not very pleased that the committee did not properly plan for this
conflict. Therefore, the committee was forced to take turns assisting with the
book fair during intervals that did not conflict with our parent conferences.
Reflecting on this project there are
some objectives I would do differently next time. Considering everyone on the
team was busy with other work responsibilities, it would have been more
effective to delegate the tasks for the book fair to accommodate the load of
work. it is suggested to use interns to assist with projects to assist with
tasks (Laureate Inc., 2009). In this case, using high school students to work
with the book fair would have been a more appropriate plan. In return,
community hours could have allotted for their effort. Frequent communication
through electronic mail or brief meetings would have addressed the any loose
ends to make it more successful (Laureate Inc. 2009).
Resource
Laureate Education Inc. (2009) (Producer)
Creating a Resource Allocation Plan [video] [transcript]. Dr. Stolovitch.
