Sealbook

Scope creep

Scope creep in ERP and planning implementations starts in a meeting

PMI found that 52% of projects had scope creep or uncontrolled scope changes in 2018, up from 43% five years before. On implementations it rarely starts with a change request. It starts with a decision two people remember differently.

How it starts

An SAP, Dynamics, NetSuite, Anaplan or Pigment rollout runs on hundreds of small design decisions: which chart of accounts to migrate, how many approval levels, which driver for allocations, what is in release one. Most are made on calls. Each one is a place where the client's expectation and the build can drift apart.

The drift stays invisible until testing. Then it arrives as "this isn't what we agreed", and the firm faces a choice: argue, or rebuild for free. Either way the scope just grew, and nobody filed a change request.

Typical examples

  • "Twelve-month rolling average for release one" becomes "we always meant six months" at UAT.
  • "Vendors without a tax number don't migrate" was agreed by someone without the authority to agree it.
  • "Revenue share for IT, headcount for facilities" was reversed in the same meeting, and the recap captured the first version.

Stopping it at the source

  • Capture each design decision with the exact words from the call.
  • Get it confirmed by the client's named reviewer, on that wording, within days, not at UAT.
  • Lock it. Any later difference becomes a visible change request, which can be scoped, priced and approved.

That turns scope creep into scope change, which is the difference between losing margin and billing for it.

Estimate what it costs youHow Sealbook works

Source: PMI, Scope creep rising (Pulse of the Profession 2018). Examples are made up; they are the kinds of decisions in Sealbook's test meetings.