Scope Creep: How to Prevent Major Source of Project Failure -

Scope Creep is one of the most common problems faced by project managers, and controlling it is not easy. Scope Creep is dreaded thing that can happen on any project, wasting money, time, resources, and causing consistent frustration to stakeholders.

This article covers most common causes of scope creep and remedial measures, project professionals may take to prevent a scope creep.

Table Of Contents

What is Scope Creep?
What is Wrong with Scope Creep?
How does Scope Creep Occur?
How to Prevent Scope Creep?
Summary
References
Further Resources

What is Scope Creep?

In order to understand Scope Creep, we must first understand the definition of Project Scope.

Scope: As per the definition of PMBoK guide, scope is the sum of the products, services, and results produced in a project. In simple terms, scope is a combination of Product Scope and Project Scope. Product Scope elaborates what project will produce and Project Scope elaborates the work needed to produce it (project scope).
Scope Creep: Adding additional features or functions of a new product, requirements, or work that is not authorized (i.e., beyond the agreed-upon scope).

Adding features and functionality (project scope) without addressing the effects on time, costs, and resources, or without customer approval
Scope Creep definition as per PMBoK guide

Change on projects is inevitable, so the possibility for scope creep is also inevitable. The key part is whether those changes are authorized or not. There is no other way of controlling a scope creep without formal authorization process.

What is Wrong with Scope Creep?

By working on unapproved features of a product, a project team devotes time to the unauthorized changes. The work to incorporate these changes must usually be done within the original time and budget estimates, leaving less time for approved parts of the scope. That could mean approved features don’t get completed, and the end-product is not what was chartered. Scope Creep is considered problematic for several reasons

Resource Strain: The project team is expected to do more work with the same amount of resources, leading to overworked team members and potential burnout.
Delivery Delays: Adding new features or requirements can delay the project timeline, causing the final deliverables to be completed later than originally planned.
Cost Overruns: Without additional funding, the project may exceed its budget, leading to financial strain and potential funding issues.
Quality Compromise: With the same resources and time, the quality of the deliverables may suffer as the team tries to accommodate the additional scope.
Stakeholder Dissatisfaction: Uncontrolled changes can lead to misalignment with stakeholder expectations, causing dissatisfaction and potential conflicts.

How does Scope Creep Occur?

There are many ways scope creep can occur on projects. However, most scope creep are internally and externally induced.

External scope creep: Customer requirement changes, environment, platform changes—all kinds of sources of change outside the project are external scope creep reasons.

Internal scope creep is more insidious, and harder to control. for e.g. Tech savvy Engineers, by their nature tend to improve their product, to make the best product they can.

There are many ways scope creep can occur on projects. Several factors contribute to scope creep:

Lack of Clarity and Depth in Initial Specifications: When the original specification document is not detailed enough, it leaves room for misinterpretation and additional requirements.
Un-managed Client-Team Interactions: Direct and un-managed contact between clients and team members can lead to informal requests for additional features or changes.
Inflexible Change Control Processes: A cumbersome change control process may lead project teams to bypass formal procedures, resulting in unauthorized scope additions.
Desire to Exceed Expectations: Project teams may attempt to deliver “more value” by adding un-requested functionality, which can lead to scope creep.
Failure to Negotiate Additional Resources: IT managers and project teams often fail to negotiate for more time and budget when additional functionality is requested, leading to scope creep.
Lack of Sponsor and Stakeholder Involvement: Disengaged sponsors and stakeholders may not be involved in decision-making, leading the project team to make changes without proper authorization.
Beginning design and development of something before a thorough requirements analysis and cost-benefit analysis has been done.

How to Prevent Scope Creep?

Let’s explore some of the practical ways to prevent a scope creep on your projects.

Clear, well-managed scope is a key element to successful projects. Sponsors can contribute to clear scope by developing their own charters. Project charter is a short document that contains mainly the business need, the project vision, and high-level features in and out of scope. If the Project Charter is created by Project Manager (which often is a case), then Project Sponsor must review it and formally approve it.
Use visual tools such as Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to represent a project scope. A WBS forms a basis for what is included in a Project Scope.
Set clearly what is in customer scope and what is out of customer scope. Document the inclusions and exclusions properly and ask for proper sign off.
Work particularly hard to find and resolve the edge cases. These are the things that could be reasonably interpreted as in scope or out of scope.
The project manager needs to work with the sponsor to either negotiate a later delivery date for the project or reduce its scope when the date is fixed.
Set up change approval committee and communicate the change approval process to project team during kick off meeting.
Specify how work that is out of scope will be evaluated, accepted and performed. A clear understanding on out of scope work would help reducing unnecessary hassles created during final sign offs.
State clearly that the scope of the project is to do whatever is required to meet minimum requirements, and explain clearly the link between the so-called improvements and budget and schedule overruns, and risk. This will prevent “gold plating”. Gold plating is a term used when developers may add product features they think are useful or interesting. Whether or not changes add value, developers or SMEs should not be making decisions about added functionality.
Some scope changes such as product improvement ideas should always welcome! We need good suggestions from team members. Implement suggestion box, ask team members to explain product improvement ideas through suggestions. These suggestions should be reviewed and approved by a sponsor/approval committee. The suggestion process helps team members spending no time on product improvement ideas that are not accepted by a sponsor.

Summary

Scope creep is dreaded in projects, and may occur for a multitude of reasons. Most of these reasons pertain to the fact that projects bring change, an unpredictable occurrence. Scope creep is not inevitable, though. There are many ways scope creep can occur on projects. However, most scope creep are internally and externally induced.

It is the project manager’s responsibility to avoid scope creep, or, if needed, manage the incorporation of the new scope into the project in the best possible manner.