Posting Date: January 22, 2003

Scope Creep (A List Apart) -- "So, let’s augment our heresy with a new claim: clients can’t tell us what they want until they see it. That’s why they don’t tell us what they want up front. They can’t! And if they could, would they really need us?"

Reader Comments...

Scope creep has several causes:
(1) The client didn't think of all the requirements.
(2) The requirements actually changed - legislation, market developemts, etc.
(3) It turned out someone else's wishes were important.

The solutions in the article mitigate type 1 scope creep, but it will never go away. In particular they deal with easily-visible features, and some requirements are less visible, e.g. response time, interfaces to other suystems, internationalisation, etc., etc. And of course you can never totally eliminate the risk that the client plain overlooks something.

But the tools mentioned are still very good ideas.

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on January 23, 2003 06:43 AM

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