Glossary

What is scope creep?

Scope creep is the gradual expansion of what a project is supposed to deliver — one reasonable-sounding addition at a time — until the timeline, budget, and focus that justified the project no longer exist.

How it happens to MVPs

Nobody plans to overbuild. Creep arrives as small, individually defensible requests that compound.

  • 'While we're at it' integrations and settings
  • Edge cases for users who don't exist yet
  • Stakeholder features that serve the demo, not the user
  • Polish on screens nobody has validated

Defenses that actually work

Scope survives when changes have a visible cost and an explicit decision point.

  • A written scope with what's deliberately excluded
  • Every addition trades out something of equal size
  • A fixed validation goal that features must serve
  • Fixed-price contracts that make creep a conversation, not a drift

Practical answers

Questions founders ask before moving forward.

Is all scope change bad?

No — learning should change scope. Creep is change without decision: additions nobody traded off, serving no validation goal.

What's the difference between scope creep and feature creep?

Scope creep inflates a project before launch; feature creep inflates a product after it. Same disease, different stage.

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