Definition: Scope creep occurs when requirements change from the planned scope without accounting for additional time or budget. Disagreement and miscommunication are prime reasons for scope creep. Sometimes key stakeholders may force scope creep into the project.
Scope creep is also known as requirements creep, or features creep.
Top Causes of Scope Creep
Below are the top causes of scope creep.
- Not Prioritizing Features: Not prioritizing requirements properly may lead to developing the less important features first and wasting time. This results in the development of high-priority work in haste, causing scope creep.
- Team Members Do Not Understand the Scope: If team members are asked to start the work without clarifying their doubts, this might lead to scope creep.
- Not Assessing the Change Request Properly: When change requests are not assessed for their impact on project objectives, scope creep can occur in later stages.
- Not Having a Customer Agreement: Baseline the scope without ensuring the customer’s understanding can cause scope creep.
- No Customer Involvement Throughout the Project: If the customer is not involved early and throughout the project life cycle, it will lead to scope creep.
- Not Involving Users Early Enough: Not involving users early in the project could lead to scope creep. Involve users early and have a plan to implement their feedback.
- Not Raising Issues When They Occur: If issues occur and are not reported, they can cause scope creep.
- Poor Estimation: If the estimation is poor, the project will be over budget, potentially resulting in the client cutting the scope. This can cause scope creep.
- Delay in QA Testing: If QA takes a long time to test, it might reduce the scope to release the changes, which can cause scope creep.
- Not Negotiating Change Requests: If change requests are not discussed and negotiated, it can cause scope creep.
- Inefficient Integrated Change Control: If a proper change request process is not defined, it might cause confusion and scope creep.
Example of Scope Creep
Two IT vendors are working on a product using different project management methodologies. The first vendor follows the waterfall approach (planning the release after six months), and the second vendor follows the agile approach (planning a release every month).
Every time the second vendor releases the deliverable without accounting for the first vendor’s work, the code of the first vendor gets broken. This forces the first vendor to update the codes, delaying his deliverable. This is scope creep and has affected the project timeline and cost baseline.
How Can Scope Creep Hurt the Project?
Scope creep can occur in any project. It makes the team environment tense because they have to add on something not planned, and can affect the project objective.
This issue increases the cost or delays the project and makes the client unhappy.
Scope creep affects the project negatively and must be avoided at any cost.
How to Manage Project Scope?
- To ensure all project team members are aware of the project scope, communicate the scope of work by setting up a kickoff meeting with the team to clarify any doubts. All team members must understand the requirements, and all stakeholders should be on the same page.
- If a customer wants to add/change the initial baselined scope, then they must explain the cost of the change and its effect on the schedule.
- Get team buy-in through briefing the requirements. This ensures the team will take ownership of the assigned work.
- Set up a team gathering and ground rules to help the team work together and respect each other’s decisions.
- If any stakeholder regularly changes the project’s requirements, set up a meeting and let stakeholders know the impact of these changes on schedule, cost, quality, etc.
- When identifying the scope, consider identifying project dependencies that might impact the project scope and determine how to mitigate/avoid them by coming to a common consensus on potential impacts.
- Project managers must raise issues when they occur rather than wait until the last minute.
Scope Creep Vs. Scope Change Vs. Scope Gap Vs. Gold Plating
Scope creep is an unintended change in the scope, while gold plating is an intended change made without assessing the impact. Scope creep occurs due to miscommunication or misunderstanding, while the gold plating team adds extra features to the product without prior approval to make the client happy.
In scope change, the customer and the project manager officially change the project’s scope, add a project feature, or extend the functionality.
Scope Gap happens when the project team’s understanding differs from the customer’s expectations.
Benefits of Preventing Scope Creep
Only 40% of projects worldwide are completed on time and within budget. Preventing scope creep will help ensure that this issue is avoided.
In turn, avoiding scope creep will lead to quality project deliverables because the development team can focus on the scope baseline without deviating from the changes. This attention increases customer satisfaction and retention.
Unavoidable Scope Creep
Many times, scope creep cannot be avoided. Consider a situation where the scope is baselined, the team worked on the changes, and the product went for user testing. During this time, users have provided feedback, and changes are necessary.
Here, scope creep cannot be ignored, even if it increases the scope. The project manager must assess the impact of not implementing their feedback.
Once it is assessed, the priority is to implement the changes without impacting the original scope. In cases where scope change is unavoidable, the project manager must raise a necessary change request, discuss with all key stakeholders the impact of not implementing it, and ask them to approve it.
Scope Creep in Agile Projects
One of the key principles of agile is “Responding to Change.” It means changes are accepted even in the middle of the project.
In agile projects, the high-level scope is usually discussed at the beginning of the project. As the project progresses, continuing elaboration is done in detail and prioritized based on the value added to the customers.
The high-level scope does not change in agile projects, but the detailed activity level scope can be changed. In cases where the detailed activity level scope needs a change, it would be replaced with an equal amount of the same work.
Customers often provide feedback after the sprint review because that is when they get new ideas and ask for further changes. This can affect the project timeline. There are also chances that post-implementation, the application might need to change from the initial requirements due to regulatory changes.
Agile focuses on outcomes, and not much importance is given to timelines. If changes are frequent, then scope baselining is not recommended. In such cases, agile methodologies are the best option.
Conclusion
Scope creep occurs due to misunderstanding and miscommunication. To avoid scope creep, project managers must ensure that the scope of the work is well defined, communication is free from obstacles, and the change and configuration management plan is properly followed.