10 Common Causes of Scope Creep and How to Eliminate Them

Scope creep, also known as “feature creep” or “requirement creep,” is what happens when changes are made to the project scope without any control procedure like change requests. These uncontrolled alterations can significantly impact the project schedule, budget, costs, and resource allocation, potentially compromising the completion of milestones and goals. Scope creep is one of the most common project management risks and is often a result of clients or stakeholders introducing new project requirements after project execution has commenced. This lack of proper review places additional demands on the project team, requiring them to fulfill more tasks, deliverables, and milestones within the constraints of the original scope, leading to scope creep.

10 Common Causes of Scope Creep & How to Eliminate Them

1. Not having a clear scope: Clarity is extremely important on any project. If you don’t clearly define your scope at the beginning, it can cause big problems down the line. How to eliminate it: make sure the scope is clear to everyone working on the project. Involve your team in setting the scope so that they buy into what they are delivering.
2. Not prioritizing among features: In a Waterfall project, building the product incrementally can potentially lead to prioritization issues. To tackle this, prioritize features based on what’s essential for a usable product. Embrace Agile, focusing on building the minimum viable product swiftly, ensuring each stage delivers a functional product for testing and user feedback.
3. Not involving the client throughout: Gone are the days where you do a month or two of work and then send the final results of this period to your client for feedback. Surprises result from this, requiring finalized work to be redone, impacting the project timeline and budget. How to eliminate it: collaborate closely with your client. Show them the work in progress, iterate, and proactively involve them throughout the journey.
4. Not having client agreement: If the client isn’t bought into the scope, they are likely to change their mind—and the deliverables—later on. How to eliminate it: ensure the client understands what is—and isn’t—in scope. Don’t just send a document outlining the deliverables—speak to them and walk them through it properly. Be transparent: ask questions such as, “Are you clear on what this deliverable is and what you’ll get?”
5. QA needing more time than estimated: How can you accurately estimate how many bugs will be raised, how long they will take to fix, and what impact this will have? How to eliminate it: estimate a percentage of the development work based on the complexity of build, then add contingency. Don’t just throw a percentage at this—speak to the QA Analyst and get them to review. Additionally, pre-define the browsers and devices you’ll test against, along with the types of issues. This will help you refine your QA estimate.
6. Not raising issues proactively: Avoiding transparency with clients or stakeholders may seem convenient initially, but it leads to regret later. To overcome this, address issues promptly as they arise (after brainstorming potential solutions).
7. Not agreeing on how to handle change: Failure to establish a plan for managing change upfront in a project inevitably leads to challenges when dealing with scope adjustments later. To prevent this, clearly define change management procedures in your Statement of Work or equivalent document. Specify whether you will utilize Change Requests, delineate in-scope and out-of-scope items, and provide guidelines for initiating Change Requests.
8. Estimating poorly: When there are many unknowns. As a result, failing to account for certain things ties you to this extra scope needed to deliver your overall project. How to eliminate it: involve your whole team in estimation. Don’t work in a silo and make guesses. Ensure you’ve explored and determined client and business requirements against user requirements before estimating. Instead of estimating based on deliverables.
9. Not involving users early enough:To avoid pitfalls, involve users early. Don’t assume you know them well enough to skip interaction. Incorporate user feedback from the start to prevent scope creep. Convince stakeholders of the value, or risk setbacks. Throughout the project, always prepare to address user feedback.
10. Not interrogating new requests: It’s tempting to embrace new requests assuming they’re the right move. But without thorough scrutiny, you risk expanding scope, duplicating efforts, or adding needless features. How to eliminate it: review all new requests with the full team. Create a clear understanding of what the request is, the impact of incorporating it, and its outcome for the user.Next, prioritize the new request and cross-check to ensure we are not already addressing it elsewhere.