A decade or two ago, I worked on a project team to lead the development and implementation of a statewide data and reporting system. It was very visible and high-stakes, and we had the luxury of creating from scratch. It was the best kind of situation: we had a big, hairy problem to solve, but the way we solved it was up to us to decide.
One of the members of our team, Bill, a database guru who also could be a bit irascible at times, would get agitated every time some new idea or feature was brought up. “Scope! Scope!,” he would cry. After several times of this, we began to take with a grain of salt and some friendly chuckles, but his fundamental point was a sound one.
Scope creep is one of the biggest dangers in our work. We’re building a web application that does x and y. Why not just spend a little more time and do z as well? It’s all related, and it’s not that big a leap. It won’t even take too much extra time. What’s the harm?
Well, to channel Bill for a moment, there are several harms. First, planning to accommodate that extra feature wasn’t done from the beginning, so it’s unclear how many other parts of the system it touches, and what other adjustments need to be made. Also, how does it affect the testing and release processes? And what sort of additional back-and-forth conversations will there be with the clients about it all?
Having allowed the scope to creep on projects large and small, I can tell you that those extra bits of functionality or work are often the ones that end up being a time vortex – not because of implementation, but because of the client discussions and fixes. Because they weren’t covered in the initial planning, all of those upfront conversations have to happen at the end, where they are longer and more costly to make work (and when everybody is, frankly, ready for the project to be done).
Bill was pretty good about helping us stay close to our outlined scope. And when the multi-year project was done and we were disbanding and exchanging end-of-project gifts, what did Bill receive? A giant bottle of — what else? — Scope.