One of the top drivers of project success is proper scope management. Many projects suffer from scope creep during the project duration. This brings up the question: “what is scope creep in project management?”.
Scope Creep Synonym: scope creep is also called as requirement creep or kitchen sink syndrome.
We also often hear the words such as feature creep. Feature creep refers to the uncontrolled changes to the product features, where scope creep refers to the uncontrolled changes to the project scope.
Scope creep in project refers to unauthorized scope expansion in the project, after the scope is baseline.
scope creep is generally the result of lack of change control procedures or bypassing them in the project.
In traditional waterfall approach scope is assumed to be fixed, and project constraints such as time, cost, staff, etc. are calculated based on the scope in bottom up approach.
Scope Creep in Project Management
In an ideal scenario, any change in the scope needs to be routed through change control procedures. Scope creep often occurs, when the project bypasses the change control procedures.
Project team as well as the other stakeholders of the project often get frustrated because of the scope creep.
What is Scope Creep in Project Management?
Scope creep in project management refers to unauthorized and uncontrolled changes occurring continuously in the project which is impacting the project constraints negatively. So, it means you continuously executing the changes, without looking at impact to the project.
What is a Scope Creep in Project Management
Scope Creep in project management refers to the unauthorized changes to the scope of a project, that occur after the project scope has been baseline and/or approved.
Its typical manifestation is the addition of new product features or functionalities without considering the impact to the other project constraints such as time, cost, resources, risk, quality, etc.
Many of us might be familiar with triple constraints in project management, which says that if scope changes, there may be impact to the time and/or cost. If do not consider the impact to the time and cost, then quality gets impacted.
Many of us get into a trap, saying that change is very small, and routing them through change control procedures may introduce more delays in the delivery. But you never know, whether the change is small or big, unless you assess the impact to the project constraints.
That is why, it is always recommended to route the change through change control procedures.
Scope Changes Impacts Time, Cost and Quality
When scope creep occurs, the project team must spend extra effort to delivery the extra scope with the same amount of resources, time and cost originally considered.
This often impacts the project manager in dealing with issues pertaining to project as well staff related issues.
Sometimes scope creep also happens because of unclear project scope or requirements. It may also happen as the stakeholder did not understand the scope clearly.
Scope Creep Definition as per PMBOK
PMI defines the scope creep as follows:
The uncontrolled expansion to product or project scope without adjustments to time, cost, and resources is referred to as scope creep.
Changes should always be assessed for impacts to other project constraints.
And hence, PMI always recommend that, changes are always routed through change control procedures, irrespective of the size of the change.
Project integration management has a process named as perform integrated change control, which would evaluate the impact of the change to the project, and determines to accept/reject the change.
What are the Causes of Scope Creep?
Scope Creep Causes – Info-graphic
- Gaps in the Requirements – Customers always do not know what they want. Sometimes certain requirements might have missed out. And sometimes, the stakeholders may not be able to provide the requirement description properly.
- You have not considered all the stakeholders – During requirements collection phase, you have missed or not involved some of the stakeholders, because of which some of the requirements are not considered.
- You are doing this type of project for the first time – You have no historical information on the similar projects in your organization. So you do not know much on what complexities are hidden in the project, and do not know what to ask and whom to ask.
- Do not have a sophisticated change control system in place – Your project did not establish a proper change control system and approval process.
- Customer Expectations to do it for FREE or less cost– Sometimes, customers think that this change does not impact much on the project and put more pressure on you to deliver it without any additional cost.
- Do not have proper (formal) communication channel established with customer.
- In experienced Project manager – Project manager is not being able to identify the scope creep situation, until it occurred.
- Requirements or scope are subjective instead of objective – Requirements agreed with no measurement criteria to confirm, whether requirements are fulfilled or not.
- Gold Plating – Project team or the project manager add the extra functionality in the project which is not part of the scope of the project to please the customer or the senior management.
Scope Creep Example
Let us consider an example of developing a software application for a customer in a phased manner. First phase you have already delivered to the customer successfully.
While the project team is working on the second phase deliverables, customer has come up with a small change, which initially seem like not going to take more than a couple of hours to fulfill the same.
So, you accepted to do it without looking at the impact on the project constraints, as it seems to be a small change.
As you progress more on the change implementation, you identified that, it is causing an impact to one or more of existing functionalities in your project. And these functions must be tested for regression, which eventually takes more time, effort, and cost for the project.
This is exactly what Scope creep is.
Effects of Scope Creep
Effects of Scope Creep
Scope creep may impact your project with either one or more of the following:
- Schedule overruns
- Cost overruns
- Quality issues
- Increase project risks
- Resource issues
- Other problems triggered by the above issues
How to Manage Scope Creep Effectively?
While scope creep is considered as serious threat to the project, the project manager always must make sure that he/she has taken steps to avoid the scope creep. The following are most important measures to avoid the occurrence of scope creep in the project.
How to Avoid Scope Creep
- Requirements Gathering – Involve all the required stakeholder early during the collect requirements process. And make sure you gather all requirements with objective measures instead of subjective measures.
- Concrete Scope agreements – Define the scope concretely and make sure the stakeholders in your organization and the customer side organization (people who are responsible), understand the scope clearly and raise any flags during the scope agreement.
- Establish a Concrete Change Management procedure – Establish a change management procedure and make sure you and the complete project team follows the same, with no exceptions.
- Establish a formal communication channel with the customer side stakeholders, to deal with changes in an accepted and agreed way. Also make sure all the stakeholders are following the agreed communication plan.
- Make sure team members coordinate in terms of project scope and understanding of requirements. And ensure there are no gaps in understanding the scope and project requirements.
As a project manager, be on top of the project to monitor any exceptional situations to prevent the situations like scope creep and gold plating.
Scope Creep Vs Scope Change
Changes are inevitable in any project. Changes to the project scope may improve the product and value.
Projects always should be flexible enough to accommodate changes. However, if the changes are managed though change control procedures, then the changes are considered positive for the project.
What is Scope Creep in Agile Project Management?
Traditional project management uses bottom up approach. It locks the scope of the project along with other constraints related to it, and then try to complete the project based on the scope. In this approach changes must be treated cautiously by assessing the impact to other project constraints. This approach is usually referred as plan driven approach.
On the other hand, agile approach considers the most important features to be delivered on priority. So, agile approach design to accommodate more changes. Agile approach is usually referred as value-based approach. This locks the time and resources and prioritize the delivery based on what features offer more value to the customer. So, in agile approach scope is always a variable factor. Hence, if the project expects more changes, then say good bye to scope creep and say hello to agile approach.
Scope Creep – Agile Value Based Approach
Following are some of the primary points, on how agile approach drives more changes.
- In scrum methodology, features will be added to product backlog, which is owned by the customer (representatives from customer side). Features are prioritized in the order of importance (value) to the customer. These features are expected to deliver in a time box usually referred as sprint.
- The customer provides these highest ranked features to the team for development at the beginning of each sprint, when the sprint planning takes place.
- Team understands the work and commit to the delivery. And no changes are allowed during the sprint. Any changes will be taken as part of the next sprint planning.
- Even in agile projects, changes are assessed for impacts, and include the relevant stakeholder to agree on the impacts to the overall project.
- Usual practice in agile is, the features which has more unknowns will be kept for later sprints. And start the immediate sprints with the features, which has enough detailed information to start the work.
- Another culture in agile approach is the customer team will be closely collaborated with the project team for quick clarifications and agree on the project impacts caused by scope changes in the project.
Summary
We have learned, what is scope creep in project management? Scope creep in project management refers to uncontrolled changes occurring in the project, after the scope is based lined or approved.
While there are many causes for scope creep in the project, primary reason being unclear requirements or scope.
We have seen an example of scope creep. Unknowingly how the creep gets accommodated in the project.
Though scope creep is a bad practice in the project management, there are ways for the project manager to manage and prevent or avoid it.
Finally, we also have seen that since agile approach welcomes the changes, it is better to follow the agile approach, if project expects more changes.
