Gold Plating

As you said, in theory, PM should not allow scope creep. However, in order to enhance stakeholder satisfaction, especially the customer/client, I won't mind some gold plating if it does not cause major impact to the budget and delivery outcome. If it causes big impact to outcome, then "NO" because it is deemed to failure if "Yes" anyway. I believe people normally respect professionalism of a PM; otherwise it is a bully! Well, it is an art of management, isn't it?

I had worked in a culture in which gold plating is more or less expected from the client. I normally have some reserves in risk management for that. So if the impact can be covered by the reserves, then I can choose to take it up.

Are we talking about scope creep or gold plating in this discussion?

as per my understanding gold plating is not something requested by client and it will be done by project team member/project manager(to add some additional features) to impress client.

Some companies believe in "Exceeding customer expectation" or "Moving beyond customer satisfaction, moving to customer delight". Such expenses are considered as "investments for future business" and such practices as "tools to beat the competition". Now that should be more at Strategic level, and at Tactical level one should try to stick to the basics.

I have had situations where lot of gold plating was done. In such cases, the project always has resulted in failure (I will explain a bit on what failure is) because the client wants what is in the contract plus the additional items at the contract price.
To please the client, gold plating is done and in KSA you cannot survive even if contract states specific requirements unless you please stakeholders. This is an unfortunate situation and remedy for this is education in my opinion about best practices to achieve success. Then we completely lose the control on scope and cannot deliver even the contractual obligation requirements. Once this situation is reached, stakeholders demand even more gold plating claiming we have not delivered even the contractual obligation items and this becomes a vicious circle where the vendor just hopes he will get change request once project is delivered and gets more and more loss and one fine day, the contract is cancelled where the senior management decides no more loss on the project.

How I have handled such situations - I have recommended not to take up projects where we can see we might not have the opportunity for change requests or from the beginning of the project, senior management has to guide the client properly on the project delivery and manage the sponsor as I have seen sponsor is the key, he can handle other stakeholders but this brings its own challenges, we will then need to please the sponsor but this is just the way business is done.

I strongly feel until organizations realize the projects are failing due to gold plating and start educating stakeholders and understand the problems gold plating causes, this situation will continue. We need to come to win-win situation for both vendor and client, be more transparent with project budgets and ongoing costs.

Hi Adil,

I hear you as Ive worked in the gulf region for 10 years and I know exactly how much this could be frustrating. However, it also happened with me, and after evaluation of the impacts these changes could cause and trying to reestimate, crash, fast track, we ended up with no other solution other than saying no we can't do that unless it is done through a separate variation order on the clients expense.

Pleasing the client is a great but not a priority over the original project deliverables, and as you said communication is important. The PM's ultimate responsibility and goal is to deliver the project as per the agreed scope, quality, cost and time.

If your assessment shows high risk impact and additional cost and time that can't be controlled or comtained then you should say no especially that such things are usually part of the main contract where contractual obligation and rights are clearly mentioned and now one can divate from these unless there is mutual consent from both parties.

At the end of the day, as you've mentioned, the projects failed to achieve its original set and agreed upon targets so I won't be surprised if the client blames the PM or performing organization.

This is my point of view IMHO.