scope creep
expressionops culture
The uncontrolled expansion of a project's scope after it is already underway.
Small 'while you're at it' additions accumulate until the deliverable, timeline, and budget no longer match the original plan. Fighting it is why change control, clear acceptance criteria, and a firm definition of done exist.
Scope creep is the gradual expansion of what a project includes, arriving one reasonable request at a time. No single addition is unreasonable, which is precisely the mechanism: each is small, each is justified, each is agreed in isolation, and the accumulated total is a project that no longer resembles the one that was estimated.
The reason it is so hard to resist is that resisting looks obstructive. Saying no to a small good idea makes you the person blocking a small good idea, and the cost of accepting is diffuse and deferred while the cost of refusing is immediate and personal. Organizations that manage scope well usually do it structurally rather than through individual willpower.
What actually works is making the trade visible rather than saying no. Every addition has a price in time, and the useful response is not refusal but exchange: this can go in, and here is what comes out, or here is the new date. That converts an argument about whether something is worthwhile, which nobody wins, into a decision about priority, which the person asking is usually well placed to make.
Also known as: scope creep, feature creep, requirements creep