Managing Scope Creep

I believe that one of the most difficult tasks we face as software development professionals is scope management.  We have all been there, features are added to a system because someone from a particular business unit says the features are a must have.  When any system has multiple business stakeholders the problem just worsens.  Here is an example: a CRM application is customized because the order of the data entry fields are not the way the customer service manager would like.  In the majority of cases the cost incurred for making this type of change will never be recouped.  This is because there isn’t any additional business value in reordering the fields.  I’m sure that you have your own stories.  If so please share.

What if I told you that I could show you how to mitigate these types of decisions from happening with a simple diagram that contains four boxes and nine labels which can be explained and executed within sixty minutes?  You would probably think I was crazy, right?  I sat in on a presentation given by Niel Nickolaisen, in which he did exactly that.  Below is a modification of the diagram that Niel used in his presentation.

The key principals are to get the business owners to focus their decision making around the business value.  I’m sure I don’t stand alone when I say it is extremely difficult to get multiple business stakeholders to agree on every feature set of a system.  The diagram is a tool that can be used to accomplish this.  As features/initiatives are being advocated, two simple questions can be asked.

1. Does this feature/initiative have significant business impact?
2. Will this feature/initiative differentiate us in the market place?

Doesn’t Matter

If something does not have a significant business impact and is not a market differentiator, then it doesn’t matter and you should not put any effort/dollars towards those features/incentives.

Partner

If something does not have significant business impact, but does allow you to differentiate yourself in the market place, then you should look to partner with another organization.  Typically if this is the case, that is not a core part of your business.  An example here might be if your organization is a book publisher, but and would like to offer products in an electronic form over the internet.  You should not spend the dollars to build your own technology to manage the digital right and the distribution.  A better use of your resources would be to find a technology company that can take that on for you.

Operate

This box focuses on areas which have significant business impact, but are not market differentiators.  For these areas, you should try to find out how the rest of the market is doing it and copy that.  You should not be trying to out do your competition here.  In this area UNIQUENESS = BAD.  Now with that said, you do need to be proficient in these areas because it does impact your business.  An example would be invoicing & bill collection.  This is vital to most businesses, but unless this is your core business, you do not need to create a new way to do invoicing or bill collection.  Find industry best practices and follow those, use out of the box applications.

Innovate

These are areas in which have significant business impact and allow you to differentiate yourself in the market.  This is where you should be spending most of your effort/dollars.  Innovation is what makes a good company become a great company.  As the axis states, this is how you will differentiate your organization from your competition.  An organization should only have two to three areas here.  Any more than that, will be a distraction.

Now when a decision needs to be made about a specific feature set, have the advocate identify which box it should belong to.  Also have the other business stakeholder vet that decision, if you don’t get consensus, push a bit more.  Once your organizations adopts this culture, you project/initiatives will shrink in size significantly.  As we all know, the smaller the scope, the more manageable it will be, and the more reliable the costs estimates will be.

See how simple it can be.  If you do try this approach, please post a comment to this post.  I’d love to hear your story.

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