While seeming obvious or trivial the concept of managing scope while planning a project can be what decides if the project is successful or not before the project even starts. According to Goskills.com 40% of agencies/companies exceed their budget due to scope creep (when while working on the project the scope of the project changes/gets bigger so the project is never truly finished). Over the course of this article i'm going to explain some of the ways to avoid causing harm to your project by not having a clearly defined scope at the beginning of your project and even give a couple of horror stories about what can happen with a project manager that’s too willing to add more to a project.

     Firstly when you imagine scope being a problem with project development you would imagine the subject being a really large project done by some fortune 500 company that would change the world/make millions of dollars but most people don’t realize that scope creep can be a problem that developers/project managers can deal with in really small projects too. To use an example from everyday life im sure most people can relate to, if you were to go to the grocery store to buy the supplies needed for dinner so you could make a cheeseburger but when you got to the cashier you realized you got excited and instead bought the ingredients for a steak, mash potatoes and a wonderful dessert! This sort of situation would leave you over the amount of money you intended to spend and maybe a little out of your comfort zone! This sort of scenario happens all the time with personal projects and even smaller projects at a corporate level.

      The best way to avoid scope creep is to have a clearly defined project or end goal after which the project is finished and requires no more additions or work. This does not mean that when changes to the project are required or desired(by the stakeholders) that you refuse to adapt to change ,as that would also go against one of the core tenants of agile, instead it means that instead of working with a “we’ll worry about that when we get there” mindset you work with a clear end goal so the goal post doesn't keep moving!

      The benefits against scope creep are of course numerous but i’l mention a few of them here. One of the main one of these being of course that it keeps the project on budget or below budget. In the earlier steak analogy the project probably ran way over budget because too many features were added ( sides and desserts) and the cheeseburger turned into a steak (the core project changed drastically). All of that would lead to a project that went over budget which should be avoided to ensure project success! The next advantage would be that it helps allocate where resources should go so that time is saved while the project is in production. If a product is estimated to need online 4-5 programmers in order to complete in a timely manner and then several months in the project gets expanded and needs more developers then time will be wasted bringing over developers from other projects within the company or outside developers and then getting either of them up to speed or trained on the subject matter. Again to use the steak analogy from before when the project was just the cheeseburger you could probably handle it yourself but when the project evolved into a steak, dessert and side you probably need some help or dinner is going to be served at a later time than initially expected. Project delivery delays may cost more money but it can also cost your company/agency a bit of your reputation.

   As stated in the previous paragraphs the importance of avoiding scope creep can not be measured and can also greatly increase the probability of success for your next project. Lastly as for the horror story i mentioned in the opening for this article there is a game called star citizen that has taken millions of dollars in crowd funding since 2008 and is still in development because the project managers keep adding new features before the old features are even completed.