Scope creep

Scope creep is the gradual expansion of what a project must deliver, without a corresponding change to budget or deadline. It rarely arrives as a large request; it arrives as a series of small, individually reasonable additions.

The cause is usually not indiscipline but a scope that was never specific enough to say what was excluded. A specification listing what will be built, with no statement of what will not, cannot distinguish between a clarification and a new requirement.

The remedy is a change process rather than resistance to change. New requests are welcome, assessed for their effect on cost and schedule, and accepted with that effect acknowledged in writing. What damages projects is not change; it is change absorbed silently until the deadline arrives.