Scope creep

Scope creep - each one of us has heard this term on every project we work on and it's as creepy as it sounds. In order to understand what's a creep we need to first understand what scope truly means and what are we scoping at the outset of the project.

This diagram is gold - it clearly shows how scoping differs in different methodologies.
Try explaining execs used to traditional waterfall methodologies that in Agile, scope is fluid - good luck !!

Moving from fixed requirements ( which locks down the scope ) if we aim to be truly Agile and customer driven then all we have is a constantly evolving backlog. If we work in Scrum then we have fixed sprints ( or fixed capacity in Kanban ) and if we lock down resources as well as quality then the only factor which we can change is scope - descope in majority of the cases as we always start on an ambitious note.

Even Dilbert is in the same boat as us 🙂

Backlog management is extremely crucial to the success of the project and it means the product owner is always on his/her toes prioritizing and planning the roadmap. This leads to the another interesting topic of features and complexity introduced in the product over time - saving it for the next blog.