Verbal scope addition and a baseline that no longer describes the project

Practices not applied:

• Scope management - scope was expanded without a documented statement of what is in and out.
• Change control - no change request, no impact assessment, no decision record, no authority check against governance thresholds.
• Project management plan and baseline management - the baselines no longer describe the approved scope, so they cannot be used to measure performance.
• Work authorisation - two analysts are working without an authorised work package, so their effort has no planned cost or deliverable.
• Reporting and information management - the report states a position the data does not support.

Consequences: performance indicators are meaningless because the denominator has changed silently; 'on track' masks a real schedule variance; the unplanned effort consumes budget with no visibility, so the contingency position is unknown until it is a crisis; there is no audit trail of who approved what, which becomes a contractual and audit problem; and the precedent that scope is free will generate more of the same. The finance director's belief is itself a symptom of a broken change process, not a stakeholder problem.

Retrospective regularisation plus a proper forward process.

1. Raise a change request now, with a unique identifier, requester (finance director), date and description, even though work has started. Record that work started early as a fact.
2. Perform an impact assessment: scope, schedule, cost, effort, resources, risk, quality, interfaces, training and benefits. Include the option to de-scope equivalent effort so the budget can absorb the change.
3. Present options to the steering committee - approve with additional time/budget, approve with compensating de-scope, defer to a later release, or reject - and record the decision, the decision-maker and the date, consistent with the thresholds defined in the governance arrangements.
4. If approved: update the scope statement, work breakdown and work packages, schedule and cost baselines (formally re-baselined only with approval), the project management plan version and the risk register; authorise the analysts' work formally; communicate the change to all affected stakeholders.
5. If rejected: notify the finance director in writing and stop the work.
6. Rebuild the report so that status is shown against the current approved baseline, with forecast to complete and any approved changes shown separately.

Refuse the instruction, but come with a recovery plan. A report that shows green while the underlying data shows a 0.82 schedule index and unbudgeted work is not reporting - it is misrepresentation, and it removes the steering committee's ability to make decisions while there is still time to act.

What to report instead:

• Current position against the last approved baseline, clearly labelled.
• The effect of the tax module separately, stating that it is not yet approved and that work has started.
• Forecast completion date and cost with the basis of the forecast.
• Options and a recommendation, with the decision required and the date by which it is needed.
• Disclosure of the process failure and the corrective actions taken.

Judgement: a red or amber status with a credible recovery plan is a normal, acceptable management output; a false green is a governance failure that also destroys the project manager's credibility when the variance surfaces. The conversation with the sponsor should be framed around decision-making quality rather than around blame, and the outcome recorded in the steering committee minutes or a decision log so the escalation is visible.