Scope Creep? Stamp It Out With These Simple Solutions

Cristina isn't having a good week. Things should be going well; her team have been hired to construct a new website by Sunshine Snacks, a nationally successful producer of desserts and sweets whose profits have been slipping in recent years.

The company see the new site as a means both to reinvent their somewhat dated and provincial image and to connect more directly and effectively with existing customers; their current online presence has been lagging behind on modern developments, leaving it fusty, uninviting and difficult to use. Cristina has offered a new approach, a stylish and modern site to engage customers and encourage them to come back to Sunshine's range of delicious concoctions.

All should be well, then. But as the plans for the new site have progressed, Cristina has found increasing difficulty in her dealings with the company. With her team, she had come up with a detailed proposal as to how the new site would appear and what it would offer to visitors. In conjunction with Sunshine, provisional budgets and schedules had been drawn up, and Cristina was entirely confident that the project would deliver on these and provide a high quality site.

Since that time, however, further requests have been made; as managers from the company see the prospective site during the testing phase, Cristina and her team keep encountering questions that begin with 'Could we add...?' or 'What if we had...?'.

She understands why this scope creep occurs - after all, no-one at Sunshine is an expert in these matters. There's a great disparity between ideas of what might appeal and understanding of what is possible. Nonetheless, it is vital that she takes the matter in hand. Both her own business and Sunshine rely on projects staying within their defined schedules and budgets, and significant scope creep can be harmful to both.

In using up finite resources, such unchecked spread of intentions can destabilise not only the project, but also the wider organisation. Cristina is caught in a conflict not easily solved, between the need for controlling the scope of the project, and not wanting to create friction with Sunshine's management. It has indeed not been a good week.

If we step back in time a little, could Cristina have done anything to prevent this damaging conflict from arising? With a little forward planning, the answer is certainly yes. A number of simple guidelines can be followed that will make it much easier for her to stay in control.

The initial plan can be used to help limit the problems raised by requests for further change.

The clearer and more comprehensible the proposals, and the more thoroughly they're explained to the client (and in layman's terms), the easier it is to put across the importance of not making additions later on.

It's important that this explanation includes details of what is and isn't possible. It would be quite unreasonable to expect the customer to be aware of any technological limitations, and they may ask for something which Cristina wouldn't be able to offer.

A coherent statement of expectations can help, too - again, working with the client so that all concerned understand what is to be done and why. Any lack of clarity for the customer in understanding the boundaries of the plan leads inherently to those boundaries being seen as flexible; ensuring that they are recognised and understood helps to keep scope under control.

Cristina will also find it easier to keep boundaries in place if she encourages the client to prioritise. The requests to expand the scope of the project might often be spur-of-the-moment, off-the-top-of-the-head notions, a glance at the page and a sudden thought of 'You know what would be good?'.

The more thoroughly that Cristina asks customers to think about their suggestions, and about how critical they are, the easier it becomes to persuade them to stick to the original plan. To this end, she can invite them to think of everything they might like to see in the site, and then divide them up into must-haves and nice-to-haves. With a little time to think and confer with colleagues, the bright ideas of a moment will frequently come to be seen as pleasant but unnecessary.

Cristina can assist this process by estimating the cost of additions, making necessity a more tangible concern. She can also encourage customers to think carefully about these requests by asking them to put the suggestion in writing; again, the extra contemplation can often point out anything that doesn't really need to be added.

All this said, though, it would be wrong to assume that any new ideas put forward must always be dismissed. After going away and thinking about the suggestion, its author may return newly enthused. If the site may indeed gain at little cost from the mooted addition, it would be foolish to discard it. Alternatively, an expansion of the project's scope may be sufficiently supported by management that it will have to be incorporated out of sheer expediency. It's important, then, to ensure there is some flexibility in the plans, and not adhering stubbornly to the original proposals.

The problems of scope creep that Cristina faces, of clients trying to expand a project's boundaries, can be faced by any kind of business in any major project. She has a difficult conflict to solve, between needing to adhere to budget and time constraints on the one hand, and an understandable disinclination to say 'no' to valued clients on the other.

This dichotomy is faced by countless project managers every day - and a short training course can be invaluable in creating effective solutions. Once you have your solutions prepared, you can look forward to completing projects that both maximise the appeal to stakeholders, and stay within those all-important limits on time and money.