Scope creep

2 of our books define this term — and their definitions are worth reading side by side.

The waterfall approach to software delivery required that all of the requirements for the software be specified before development began. Any additions to the requirements after that point were labeled scope creep and were strongly discouraged. The problem with this is that it is normal during a software development process to find out that requirements need to change. As Jeff Patton says in his book User Story Mapping “scope does not creep—understanding grows.” Outlawing scope creep incentivizes employees to pad the initial requirements with everything they think they might need, resulting in feature bloat.

War and Peace and IT: Glossary, Mark Schwartz

See also Feature bloat · user story · Waterfall Approach · Lean · Work Item

Filed under Flow & Lean

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