Workflow
Scope Change Management
Scope changes decided on purpose, never by drift
About this workflow
Managing scope against reality as the build unfolds — new asks, cuts, discovered complexity and the drift nobody decided, each weighed against the outcome the work exists for. The work runs from an assessment that finds the drift in the tracker as well as the changes people raise, through trade-off options that each name what they spend in scope, time or quality, to a record of what was decided, the scope before and after, and the one message the affected teams need.
Its purpose is to make every change a choice with a known price. Scope that slides without a decision is the commonest way a release misses its outcome, and a quality cut that nobody named is the most expensive.
The recognizable task
Typical trigger
- A new ask, a cut or discovered complexity is pressing on the agreed scope
- The tracker no longer matches what everyone thinks was agreed
- Someone needs to know what a change will cost before saying yes
What good looks like
- Every change, including drift nobody proposed, is assessed against the outcome
- Every option says whether it spends scope, time or quality, and a quality trade is named as one
- Every change has a recorded decision, a reason and a before-and-after of the scope