Scope creep

In project management, scope creep is continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project's scope, generally experienced after the project begins. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered harmful. These harms include overruns in costs, schedule, or both. Though if scope creep is well managed, it can help projects by creating a better final product. Scope creep cannot be entirely prevented, so mitigating its harms is done by managing it after noticing it. Scope creep has at least some presence in every project, and it can endanger many of them. Scope creep is also known as requirement creep, kitchen sink syndrome, mission creep, or feature creep, with the last two relating especially to government/military projects and software projects, respectively. Sometimes, scope creep and feature creep are defined separately, with scope creep referring to scope enlargements and feature creep referring to adding extra features.