All glossary terms
Plan
Scope creep
The uncontrolled growth of a project's requirements after work has started, when features get added without matching adjustments to time, budget, or staffing. Scope creep differs from healthy change: the additions bypass the prioritisation and trade-off process, so the team quietly commits to more while the deadline stays fixed.
Scope creep usually arrives in small increments — a 'quick' extra field here, an 'obvious' edge case there — none individually alarming, collectively fatal to a deadline. The antidote is not rigidity but visibility: route every addition through the same prioritisation that the original scope went through, so adding something means consciously dropping or deferring something else.