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Scope creep

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Dattprasad Bhaskar Vernekar Senior Manager Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Is the concept of scope creep exactly same in Fixed price project and Time and material project.
Is it necessary to follow scope creep with change request , if there is an additional scope added from the customer end.
With scope creep, does scope baseline, cost baseline, WBS, Activity list change.
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Ruth Howcroft Programme Manager - Software development| CACI Ltd Twickenham, United Kingdom
If there is a change of scope from the customer, this should always trigger a change request and then a cost estimate for the additional work (assuming it would indicate an increase in work). It would not form part of any fixed price contract, as that would only cover work originally scoped. I guess the main difference is that in a fixed price contract a new purchase order or change to the contract would be required, whereas on time and materials just the approved change request would suffice. The CR is required even on time and materials in order to evidence formally the request from the customer. It will also help with reviewing schedule and budget performance at the end of the project.
You would probably need to create a new scope and schedule baseline to reflect the new work.
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Dattprasad Bhaskar Vernekar Senior Manager Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Thanks for the explanation.
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Margaret Love Senior Instructor| Velociteach Greenville, Sc, United States
Technically, the term "scope creep" refers to changes that creep in without proper assessment via change request. So if there is a properly assessed change request, it isn't scope creep. Changes to scope in a fixed price project require a change request just like they do in any other project. If approved they could result in a change to the contract, which may or may not involve change in cost and schedule. My last project was a long fixed price project and we had many many change requests. Some of those did affect the contract, but not all. For example, ours was a big software project and if we had designed a feature to be coded in a single module but the developer decided it should be in two separate modules, that was a change request to be evaluated (because it could impact the data team, the testing team, the training team, etc) but it was too detailed to affect the overall contract.

I agree with Ruth. Any change from the customer should be handled via formal change request which will likely affect the contract, the schedule, and/or the cost.
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1 reply by Ruth Howcroft
Jun 04, 2018 2:15 PM
Ruth Howcroft
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Absolutely! Scope creep only happens when change is not controlled correctly. It would be wise to draw the team's attention to change process to allow all change requests to be captured.
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Dattprasad Bhaskar Vernekar Senior Manager Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Thanks Margaret, for detailed explanation which can be understood easily.
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Ruth Howcroft Programme Manager - Software development| CACI Ltd Twickenham, United Kingdom
Jun 02, 2018 5:04 PM
Replying to Margaret Love
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Technically, the term "scope creep" refers to changes that creep in without proper assessment via change request. So if there is a properly assessed change request, it isn't scope creep. Changes to scope in a fixed price project require a change request just like they do in any other project. If approved they could result in a change to the contract, which may or may not involve change in cost and schedule. My last project was a long fixed price project and we had many many change requests. Some of those did affect the contract, but not all. For example, ours was a big software project and if we had designed a feature to be coded in a single module but the developer decided it should be in two separate modules, that was a change request to be evaluated (because it could impact the data team, the testing team, the training team, etc) but it was too detailed to affect the overall contract.

I agree with Ruth. Any change from the customer should be handled via formal change request which will likely affect the contract, the schedule, and/or the cost.
Absolutely! Scope creep only happens when change is not controlled correctly. It would be wise to draw the team's attention to change process to allow all change requests to be captured.

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