Blog Updates
Hello Agile. Goodbye, Scope Creep!
Posted on Jul 21, 2010
I’ve been thinking about scope creep, and how its existence is a harbinger of, ironically, the need for change to accommodate change. Or more correctly, the need for change from our traditional waterfall approach to something more agile in order to accommodate change in product requirements.
Fifty years ago, planning out the scope of an entire project and locking it in worked because the pace of change was much slower. Teams had time to analyze, design, code, test, and deploy the product before their customer could change their mind. It was in the late 1980s that all of the inventions that speed thoughts of change started being used by the general marketplace: the personal computer (PC), internet, email, and cell phones. The speed of communication increased, which increased the speed of knowledge, which drove the speed of change. Teams using the traditional plan-driven approach to product development could not keep pace with this new speed of change.
There was also a corresponding increase in the ability of teams to deliver new products to the market as a result of technology changes. CAD/CAM systems, object-oriented programming languages, desktop compilers and debuggers, and reverse engineering applications allowed engineers to design and build products faster. One assumes this meant that the delivery of value was able to keep pace with the speed of change, but this was not typically the case. The impediments to fast delivery of value to the marketplace were the old philosophy that change was bad, and the brittleness of the traditional approach to scope definition and planning.
A new approach to product delivery was required in order to take advantage of the technological advances and speed value to market. And it had to abolish the philosophy that change was bad, and instead embrace it. It had to give teams the flexibility they needed to react to change, and the framework and discipline to execute change.
Hello, Agile. Goodbye, scope creep.
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Jean Tabaka said:
Jul 23, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Michele,
Too true. I believe that the advance in technology has brought expectations of everything everywhere being faster. That means faster ability to innovative and faster ability to absorb change. So, you are right. What used to be considered “scope creep” in days of yore is now just the change we absorb as the natural cost of doing business. If businesses still use the term “scope creep” they are still in the 1970’s and there are even creepier things than their scope
Thanks for the cool blog! Jean