scopeverruiming

Scopeverruiming, often translated as scope creep, is a project management phenomenon in which a project's scope expands beyond the original objectives without adequate adjustments to time, budget, or resources. It typically starts with small, informal requests that are approved by stakeholders and then accumulate into substantial changes.

Common causes include vague initial requirements, insufficient stakeholder involvement in scoping, weak change control, shifting priorities, and evolving business needs. It can affect any sector, including software development, construction, and research projects.

The consequences can include budget overruns, schedule delays, degraded quality, resource conflicts, and increased risk. Teams may experience burnout and reduced stakeholder trust as the project drifts from its original plan.

Mitigation involves establishing a formal change-control process, requiring written change requests, and performing impact analyses on scope, cost, and schedule before approval. A baseline scope should be defined and maintained, with decisions made by a change-control board or equivalent governance body. Prioritization techniques such as MoSCoW, value-based scoring, or cost-benefit analysis help distinguish essential work from optional additions. Agile approaches manage scope by maintaining a prioritized backlog, using timeboxing, and delivering incremental value while ensuring stakeholder agreement on what will be included in each iteration.

In agile environments, scope is expected to be flexible, but uncontrolled expansion remains a risk and requires disciplined backlog management. Scopeverruiming is closely related to the English term scope creep and to requirements management and change control.