Progressive elaboration and scope creep

Progressive elaboration

This term is used in project management/planning in order to refer the refinement of the project objectives. It is the continuous evolution of the project.

Scope Creep

This term is used in project management/planning in order to refer the increase of the project objectives without the knowledge of the project team.

Progressive elaboration is good in terms of helping the project team identify the clear scope. It would help the project to deliver the quality product/service within the arrived time/cost.

Scope creep is not good in terms of causing failure to the project team, overrun of costs, time.

But often PM community is resistent to do progressive elaboration thinking that it is scope creep, but I think it is because of their lack of understanding.

Let me give a simple example.

The project objective is to give a query screen for employee to get their payroll information.

Project elaboration is funnelling down to the specifics like

(a) What information an employee would key in to query

(b) What information would be displayed as a result

Scope creep is

(a) In addition to the payroll information, display the vacation details, training details of the employee.

Hope you find this article useful and do progressive elaboration of your plan/project so that I think it would result in higher probability of your project success.

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