Scope Creep In Agile: How to Bust It – For Good

Agile scope creep is perhaps the most common complaint of agile teams and managers alike. Agile is perhaps more susceptible to scope creep than any other project management methodology.

This is probably because agile’s innate flexibility leads teams to have fewer boundaries about what can and cannot be incorporated into a sprint or project.

Scope creep is, to some extent, unavoidable. But you can mitigate the worst of the problems by keeping tabs on the most common fail points that lead to scope creep, and knowing how to cut scope creep off cold.

Keep in mind as you read that the very best way to avoid scope creep in the first place is to have high-level visibility on every stage of your project, including insight into what your team members are working on. Visor is a great way to ensure you have that visibility. 

Why Scope Creep Happens

Understanding why scope creep commonly happens is the fastest way to get out in front of it. It’s not a force of nature that simply appears for no reason. Scope creep can almost always be linked back to one of these typical root causes:

1. Inaccurate specs and assumptions – Not every round of estimation and goal-setting is going to end up being on the money. Often, scope creep happens just because a team over-estimated success and under-estimated failures.
2. Priority mis-match – Sometimes the priorities of one team or contributor aren’t in alignment with the priorities of others. When disjointed teams function under their own assumptions, scopes lose realistic boundaries.
3. Abrupt shifts in the plan – For reasons beyond the team or stakeholders’ control, a plan might suddenly change. Usually this is for a logistical reason far beyond when anyone could have predicted, like a major market trend change or the actions of a competitor.
4. Unclear goals – When the end goal isn’t clear, scope creep is almost a guarantee. 
5. Lack of visibility – You might argue that this is the root case of all the other problems. Scope creep in agile is the result of different individuals and teams not knowing exactly what is going on with those around them, and the project drifts away from its original scope as a result. Avoid this with strong visibility tools like Visor.

If you know why scope creep happens in agile, you’ll be much better prepared to deal with it when it arises.

Ways to Bust Scope Creep

So you’ve noticed which way the wind is blowing, and you’re watching your project scope begin the creep process. Maybe because of the typical causes above, maybe it’s because of an edge case unique to your specific project. Whatever the reason, there are three things you can do to bust the agile scope creep fast.

Fix your estimations

If it’s still early in the slide of scope creep, you might be able to save the project by working on the original estimations. Where did you expect to land on things like time spent, number of tasks, resource usage, and total cost? Can you find ways to re-adjust those numbers to be more realistic?

If it’s still early, you might be able to return to your stakeholders with these adjustments (and the context of why you made them) and redefine the scope itself. You can try using or modifying project scope templates to add a level of control and clarity over what each project, epic, or sprint will and will not cover.

To present your data on a scope adjustment, use colorful, clear charts so stakeholders get the idea at first glance. Visor is perfect for this.

Once you’ve re-negotiated your estimations, you’ll be able to form a new path going forward. That may mean religating some project tasks to backlogs.

Use your backlog

Your backlog exists for a reason, use it! Go through your project and find the lowest-priority items and bump them from your list.

If priority isn’t the biggest concern, you may need to move items to a backlog based on highest costs. Either way, this should do the heavy lifting to help you get back into a reasonable scope.

But sometimes even using the backlog isn’t enough. You’ll need to cut a lot harder to save some projects. That’s when it’s time to…

Prioritize ruthlessly

Sometimes the answer to scope creep is revisiting your priorities. Often, this means you’ll need to leave some tasks on the cutting room floor. This is different from using your backlog in that a backlog is full of items you do expect to one day get around to. In this case, you’ll treat these items as struck from the list for good. Future projects might include the original scope items, but consider them gone for this project’s sake.

When You Can’t Stop the Creep, Here’s How to Handle it

Sometimes, no matter what you do, something goes awry. And sometimes it’s really and truly a problem, rather than simply an annoyance. In these situations, you’ll need to hang onto two important mindsets.

First of all, stay calm. Even in really severe situations (major project overhauls, huge deadline shifts, important clients or stakeholders getting upset) it’s going to be okay. If nothing else, you know that panicking isn’t going to help you.

You’ll also want to stay calm as a way to help guide others who may not be keeping quite as much composure, be it in a meeting or in the general stress level of your team on a given week.

If you can help everyone hold it together, the next way to handle severe, unavoidable scope creep in agile projects is to maintain a flexible mindset. Flexibility and keeping a loose hold on your expectations is the primary difference between folks who handle scope creep well and those who don’t.

Cultivate a flexible mindset by setting realistic expectations for your team and by having backup plans if things do go off the rails.

Bust your Scope Creep Today

The best way to minimize scope creep is high visibility into every stage of your project. Visor can help by creating beautiful, detailed reports for every stakeholder, even if they don’t use Jira. With two-way syncing, you’ll be able to set the report up once and keep it current forever. Get started for free today.

If this article was helpful, consider reading these related articles:

1. Thinking Tactically About Your Jira Issue Hierarchy
2. 5 Free Agile Product Roadmap Templates Your Team Can Use Today
3. How Can You Maximize Product Backlog Refinement?

Halden Pfearsen

Halden Pfearsen

Senior Writer

Halden Pfearsen is the head writer at Visor, bringing you the best of the best in PM strategy, news, and tools. She's been in the SaaS startup space since 2016, and has loved every second. Other things she loves include guitar, camping, and tabletop games.

Find more of Halden's published work, presentations, and awards right here.

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