Scope Change Control

---
name: scope-change-control
description: Handle new requests mid-project by making the trade-off visible rather than absorbing them silently. Use when a project is accumulating additions and the date is not moving.
---

# Scope change control

Scope creep is rarely one big decision; it is a series of small
reasonable additions each absorbed without adjusting anything. Control
means every addition has a visible cost, not that changes are refused.

## Method

1. **Accept that change is normal.** Learning during a project should
   change it, and a process that treats change as failure gets bypassed.
2. **Price every request in time or scope.** This addition means that
   date moves or this other thing drops, presented as a choice for the
   sponsor rather than a refusal.
3. **Route changes through one owner.** Requests arriving directly at
   engineers get absorbed invisibly, which is how creep happens.
4. **Log every change with its decision.** Accepted, deferred, or
   declined with a reason, since the log is what explains the schedule
   later (see agent-decision-log).
5. **Batch small changes.** Individually trivial additions are
   collectively significant, and reviewing them together makes the
   accumulation visible.
6. **Protect the current iteration.** Changes land in the next cycle
   rather than mid-flight, because switching costs are real.
7. **Revisit scope when reality changes materially.** Discovering the
   original plan was wrong justifies rescoping rather than grinding
   through it (see project-scoping).

## Boundaries

Change control makes trade-offs visible; it cannot create capacity, and
a sponsor who refuses all trades is making a decision by default.
Excessive process discourages beneficial change. Fixed-price contractual
work has different rules with legal implications.