How to Prevent Scope Creep

Most features that get added to a project were never validated by customer demand. Use a three-stage filter. Stage 1: behavioral evidence. Track what users actually do, not what they say they want. Require five to ten customer conversations before any feature is approved.

Stage 2: RICE scoring. Reach times Impact times Confidence divided by Effort. If the score doesn't clear your threshold, the feature waits. Stage 3: TCO analysis. Feature development costs $25K to $75K. Annual maintenance runs 20 to 40 percent of that. If the feature can't show positive ROI over three years, it's scope creep, by definition.