3 Culprits of Scope Creep

Creep happens.

Or does it?

Good outsource partners are there to minimize creep, minimize change orders and make your development projects predictably more profitable.

In fact, outsource partners should actually hate change orders.

Here’s how to embrace that thought…

3 Things to Avoid

Any number of issues can take a project off course. Here are some common guilty suspects in the world of SaaS and web development.

1. Project Approvals for Planning and Design Are “Incomplete”.

For a large development project, having every single “i” dotted and “t” crossed from the very get-go is absolutely not realistic. The process does have some organic nature to it. And overall, development is an art, not a science. There’s more than one way to do things.

However, there should be completed approvals for planning and design before the project is started. And with weekly (a.k.a. regular) check-in meetings built into the ongoing development schedule to handle the wild cards along the way… before molehills become mountains.

All content and assets need to be fully assembled and archived in one place. And they need to be assessed as good to go. For example, in the case of an e-commerce site, all product images are collected, and they are all in the proper resolution, ratio, size, etc.

Or, there are solid timelines in place for what is arriving, and when.

Pre-approvals for planning and design will remove fuzziness that can foster scope creep.

2. Managing the Client is “Not Proactive.”

A discovery session at the front end of the project will set expectations. Create timetables. Schedule deliverables. Nail down costs.

A full development plan… with sales contracts, purchase agreements, specs, workflow, assignment of resources… it’s all put in writing.

Expectations, agreements, paperwork. They all help remove those inches that can be given up. Those inches can turn into miles.

Discovery sessions set expectations and create agreements that dissuade change orders.

Motivational sign in a quality-control office:
Think!

3. “Off-the-shelf is Prioritized” Over Customization.

Sometimes using a plugin or other templated, store-bought tech solution makes sense.

For one, maybe a client is just starting up and needs a basic site to build revenue, so there’s a budget to grow the company later on with a better site. Or, maybe it’s a digital tool or SaaS item that is being developed. Same thing. Baby steps might make sense in some cases.

But that has to be made known from the start. That ensures there is no expectation that the shortcuts taken today will be scalable tomorrow.

For example, maybe there is a plugin being used that sends automated text messages based on interactions with the technology. That might be hundreds or thousands of the same types of messages every day.

But over time, that grows to tens of thousands of messages, with a more complex matrix and database required to fire off other unique messages, based on each specific interaction. It got more complex. And that the original solution won’t be scalable.

As long as that is known up front, the expectations going forward are set and formalized.

Customized technical solutions anticipate and accommodate scalability.

Complete project plans and design approvals, proactive client management, and scalable solutions all contribute to taking the creep out of the scope.

Complete project plans and design approvals, proactive client management, and scalable solutions all contribute to taking the creep out of the scope.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

—Henry Ford