Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don’t do
anything to make it impossible.
—Ron Padgett, from “How to Be Perfect”
“Scope creep” may sound like a fun, Halloween TikTok dance craze. But it’s the opposite of fun to experience in an arts organization.
Scope creep (or its close counterpart, mission creep) is part of what fosters overwork and stress in the arts, leads to ballooning budgets in cultural facility projects (Woronkowicz et al 2012), and pushes feet-on-the-ground organizations toward teetering-on-the-edge.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines scope as “the sphere or area over which any activity operates or is effective.” While creep means “to move quietly and stealthily so as to elude observation.” So scope creep describes the slow and often invisible drift from deliberate and considered action to broader and less intentional goals.
You and your team may begin with a clear, focused, well-considered, and appropriately resourced course of action. But the siren songs of your aspirations and your constituents lure you toward the rocks. Or, perhaps, you begin with a vague and ambitious “hero sandwich of good intentions,” and creep your way from improbable to impossible outcomes by thoughtlessly saying “yes,” or just not saying “no.”
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It’s not wrong to make changes to your plan or your process. In fact, it’s essential to do so (“scope discovery,” or the realization of better or more aligned actions than originally planned, is a wonderful thing). The problem arises when you accept or allow such changes without interrogating their impact on your people, your money, or your stuff.
The PMBOK® Guide describes scope creep as “when additional scope or requirements are accepted without adjusting the corresponding schedule, budget, or resource needs” (PMI 2021). It’s the “accepted without adjusting” part that leads you astray.
So, how do you catch and consider scope creep in mid-creep? You stay alert to the places it can sneak by you and your team:
Start with a clear and robust scope definition for any project, including a description of its purpose, its intended outcomes and impact, its constraints (people, time, budget, etc.), and its key decision-makers.
Decide where and how changes will be flagged and who will consider them, given the goals and constraints defined above.
Engage constituents early and often – not only decision-makers but also those you seek to serve or support – so you can collectively sort scope discovery from scope creep.
Communicate candidly and continually about how the project is on-task, on-target, on-budget, and on-track, or not.
Of course, it’s impossible for any project to stick to the plan in the wild. As entrepreneur and educator Steve Blank often says, “no business plan survives first contact with customers.” But it is possible to be an attentive and assertive steward for your mission, your team, your resources, and your reputation by interrogating scope creep as it attempts to sneak by you.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: People Operations
People Operations involves designing and driving systems and practices that attract, engage, retain, and develop people within the enterprise (also called human resources).
Framework of the Week: Personal Projects
The Personal Projects framework was developed by psychology scholar Brian R. Little to interrogate the way people understand and organize their actions in the world. He defined personal projects as “extended sets of personally salient action in context.”
Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash
Sources
Blank, Steve, and Bob Dorf. The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. California: K & S Ranch, 2012.
Kogon, Kory, Suzette Blakemore, and James Wood. Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager: A FranklinCovey Title. 1st edition. Dallas, Texas: BenBella Books, 2015.
Larson, R. & Larson, E. (2009). “Top five causes of scope creep ... and what to do about them.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2009—North America, Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Project Management Institute. The Standard for Project Management and A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: (PMBOK® Guide). Seventh edition. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc., 2021.
Rudder, Alana, and Kelly Main. “Scope Creep: Definition, Examples & How To Prevent It.” Forbes Advisor (blog), August 25, 2022.
Woronkowicz, Joanna, D. Carroll Joynes, Peter Frumkin, Anastasia Kolendo, Bruce Seaman, Robert Gertner, and Norman Bradburn. “Set in Stone: Building America’s New Generation of Arts Facilities, 1994-2008.” Cultural Policy Center, University of Chicago, June 2012.
The PMBOK line is the cleanest version of this I have seen: accepted without adjusting. For a freelancer working with an arts organization, what sentence have you seen work when a client asks for more without reopening the budget or timeline? I am collecting how practitioners phrase that moment.