Project Assurance Resources
What Causes Scope Creep?
The information in this guide is intended for general purposes only. For more specific guidance around your organisation’s projects, please get in touch with our team.
- Lack of clarity on what the business needs or wants to achieve
- Ambiguous scope document
- The business’ priorities change after the project’s set in motion
- Lack of strong governance leaves the project vulnerable to change
- The project’s key stakeholders aren’t consulted early enough
- Project teams adding in features that are out of scope
- Conflicting stakeholder objectives
- The project team don’t say ‘no’ enough
- Losing site of initial goals due to a project becoming years in duration
- What can you do about scope creep?
- Where to next?
Scope creep affects every project manager or project team member at some point in their career. It’s also one of the more common phrases used by those working on a project. Collectively across the year, organisations spend hours discussing what is in or out of scope, and whether work to date has fallen outside of the original requirements. At its core, scope creep is the name given to completed or planned work, or demands for work on a project that sits outside of its original requirements. The word ‘creep’ is apt, given this phenomenon occurs subtly and slowly in many projects.
But as much as scope creep is a familiar concept to many of us, there’s no single reason as to why it happens. Rather, there’s a number of tendencies or issues within a project that commonly lead to scope creep happening. In this guide, we’re going to explore what some of these scope creep causes are.
Lack of clarity on what the business needs or wants to achieve
The best way to invite scope creep into your project is by not having a really clear view of the business’ objectives. A project does not stand up in a vacuum; but falls out of a senior leadership team, board or ministerial mandate. Some projects may come out of business cases from within the organisation, but even these are often seeded from broader business objectives.
The business has a strategic vision which will be centred around a number of items. Examples may include:
- Moving to digital-based service for customers.
- Becoming a community advocate for [issue].
- Establishing inter-organisational partnerships.
- Achieving a level of financial strength.
- Migrate to carbon neutrality.
Underneath these objectives will be programmes or initiatives from which projects can arise. How these projects are defined and what they are designed to do is critical to protecting against scope creep. Without these projects having a scope that speaks to business outcomes, project teams and stakeholders may influence delivery that sits outside the original purpose. It’s why having governance to protect the scope is so important.
Ambiguous scope document
The scope document may be part of a broader project outline or exist on its own. Some scope documents are a spreadsheet, others a traditional written document. No matter the format, a scope document must be clear to all stakeholders and leave nothing to interpretation. Once a scope has been signed off, everyone involved in the project will have license to refer back to that scope as means for pushing for an idea.
While a project scope can be changed, doing so officially shouldn’t be a robust process. A proper scope change by design should have to meet a number of needs including the rationale, budget implications and risks.
The scope document needs to have clear statements around what is and isn’t part of the work. It’s almost more important here to state what’s not included as this is the shortest route to prioritising requests outside of scope. In our experience, there’s more difficulty interpreting in scope activities than those out of scope. We’d suggest spending significant time assessing the project and its outcomes carefully to deliver the most comprehensive out of scope possible. Business Analysts and project/programme owners will help build a complete picture of the project before activity gets underway.
Ambiguous scope documents have a number of telltale signs:
- Fluffy, aspirational descriptions.
- Lack of tangible outcomes.
- Complicated language and acronyms.
- Leaning on caveats and ‘maybe’ language.
- Deferring scope to discretion of project team and/or stakeholders.
Scope documents should be useful, efficient reference tools, and sit alongside a more detailed project overview. If stakeholders cannot quickly absorb the information in a scope document, it’s not doing its job.
The business’ priorities change after the project’s set in motion
When the business makes some strategic changes, a project may be affected. Even if there’s not an official change of scope to a project, those involved may make decisions to push beyond scope due to other factors within the organisation.
It’s important for the steering committee and project management office to address these issues as they arise, and facilitate changes to budget and deliverables within the scope document. It’s in these moments where independent assurance can be really useful to make sure things are done properly.
Lack of strong governance leaves the project vulnerable to change
There’s a risk of scope creep when the loudest or most persistent voice does not have to follow a decision making process. Suddenly a project is working towards one stakeholder’s vision and away from the actual business outcomes it’s designed to achieve. When the roles and responsibilities are left up for interpretation, your scope can be pulled in any direction. Closing these gaps in governance can help to protect the project.
The project’s key stakeholders aren’t consulted early enough
Many of the projects that large organisations put in place touch many parts of the business. This means that those involved in the project will need to consult with, get sign off from and deliver to representatives of these various units. For example, a project based around digital transformation may include stakeholders from:
- Product Design
- Data
- Technology
- Marketing
- Communications
- Business Relationships
- People and Culture
- Finance
- Legal
And this is a short list compared to what we routinely see in stakeholder lists. Each component of the project may have its own stakeholders that fit within a business unit (often chosen due to an assigned responsibility or specialist area of expertise).
The problem that sometimes occurs is when stakeholders have not been engaged early enough in the delivery process, meaning the team continues to work without the necessary checks and balances to ensure the outcomes are satisfactory to that stakeholder who has been given a certain accountability. If this happens, the stakeholder rightly will slow or stop progress in order to conduct their review and give sign off. In some instances, their review necessitates some backtracking and change to the scope is required.
Stakeholders should be part of building the requirements of the project before delivery even starts. If those involved with budgeting and scoping a project involved those stakeholders in this process, they’d avoid the need for scope creep during the project delivery phase.
Project teams adding in features that are out of scope
While this is largely a positive for organisations, there is a risk of scope creep here when those in a project team decide to go above and beyond the call by adding in new features that while helpful, take longer and essentially waste resource budget.
Project managers need to ensure their people are both recognised for the good work they do within scope, and be the conduit between leadership and the project team as to the purposes of the project. Project team members may add in features simply because their decision making becomes detached from the original business outcomes.
If a feature or beneficial piece of work has been raised by the team, this isn’t necessarily something to shut down; in fact something that will help the business even more should go into a register and be brought to a steering committee for discussion.
Conflicting stakeholder objectives
Keeping everyone happy can get expensive very quickly!
The project team don’t say ‘no’ enough
Saying no is essential for a project’s success.
The only way to prevent a scope from blowing out is by actively practising the art of ‘no’ in a courteous and professional manner. ‘No’ doesn’t need to always be framed like that; project teams have the reference point of a scope on which to rely. There will be multiple requests by stakeholders that are ‘off the record’ – often for things that are framed as within scope, but really will require additional work.
Push back helps to set expectations, and done early on, will build a better relationship between delivery and those stakeholders.
Losing site of initial goals due to a project becoming years in duration
We often suggest to clients that breaking a project down into smaller projects can help to put much more control on budget, time and deliverables. When projects extend across multiple years, project teams can easily lose sight of the original business requirements.
Without this close alignment to the project’s original scope and objectives, project teams are more susceptible to including feature requests or redirection. This is another situation where the function of governance can help.
What can you do about scope creep?
The impact of additional work following the organisational change control process is that budget and time have been considered and approved carefully. The impact of doing extra work due to random requests from stakeholders is that the impact to budget and milestones will show itself as an unpleasant surprise where questions will be asked of the project manager first and foremost. If requests have been made offline, project teams can really struggle to show to a directive that originally prompted the extra work.
- A very clear scope document.
- Roles and responsibilities communicated and captured somewhere central.
- Frequent reporting on progress and the project’s objectives.
- Communication lines open for any concerns or suggestions.
- Milestones and timeline in place.
- An up-to-date risk register which captures out of scope requests as high impact.
- Manage stakeholder relationships closely.
Scope creep is very common in the project world, but it will prevent your project from being as successful as it could be. Implement the right processes to reduce ‘creep’ and better manage positive ‘change’.
Where to next?
Read our other project resources:
Setting project milestones
Staying on track isn’t just a matter of delivering on time, but controlling costs too. We offer some useful tips when setting project milestones.
Learn More >>
How to avoid project failure
Project failure is something every organisation wants to avoid. We touch on some of the approaches to preventing things going wrong.
Learn More >>
Identifying project risks
Risks exist in all organisations. It’s how we prepare, adapt and navigate these risks that makes projects successful. Read our guide on spotting and dealing with risks to a project.
Learn More >>
Understanding project governance
All the structure and processes around how a project is delivered can mean the difference between a successful project or not. Learn what governance is and how it can help.
Learn More >>
What causes scope creep
Scope creep affects every project manager or project team member at some point in their career. In this guide, we explore what some of the causes are.
Learn More >>
Managing project stakeholders
In this guide, we offer some tips for managing stakeholders to keep relationships positive and projects on track.
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