17 Overscoping
“Overscoping” is defined as including unneeded items into the design, and thereby causing the project to take too long to complete and/or cost too much. In some cases, overscoping can cause a project to fail completely, by producing a product that’s hard to use, too slow, or just-plain ugly, or worse, by failing to produce a product at all, by running out of money or time.
How overscoping tends to happen varies with the overall project methodology.
17.1. Waterfall
Waterfall projects are the least susceptible to overscoping, but when it happens, it happens up-front, and all at once. The requirements-gathering phase happens all at once as the first phase in the project. If the requirements gathering phase lasts too long, it delays the entire project. The key to avoiding overscoping in a Waterfall project is to ask “Is this required?” and “Is this feature worth the effort?”. Priorities don’t matter in reducing overscoping in Waterfall projects, because the priorities only influence delivery schedules/sequencing, not whether or not something will be done.
17.2. Agile
In an Agile project, overscoping generally won’t prevent a project from being delivered and won’t even delay anything, if things are prioritized properly, but it can make the project go on forever, with virtually unlimited costs. There are two ways that overscoping tends to happen in an Agile project. The first is that some needed feature is itself overscoped, in that there are unneeded sub-features in a feature, or features in a module. This type costs the most, because the extra bells and whistles ride in with the needed feature. The second is that functionality that is not at all needed may be added to the backlog independently. These are only of minor concern, because if characterized properly as very low priority, those features will remain at the end of the backlog, and at some point, project management must look at the remainder of the backlog and decide “we don’t need any of this — we’re done”. That’s easier suggested than done, because often in an Agile project, nobody wants to end the project, because it could mean loss of a leadership position, or otherwise having to find something else to do. Don’t fall into the trap of “needing” to find more requirements. It’s ok to say “done” and go on to the next project.
17.3. Spiral
In the Spiral development model, there are two ways that overscoping happens. The first is trying to include too much in a release, because it may be that including those features would take too long or cost too much. The second way that Spiral overscoping can occur is that at the end of the release lifetime of the product (the point at which it’s no longer worthwhile to issue new versions), producing more versions may cost more than they’re worth on the open market.
17.4. Discussion Questions
- Under what circumstances is expanding the scope a good idea?
- Under what circumatances is it a bad idea?
