Scope Creep
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Scope creep is when a simple feature request slowly grows into rebuilding the entire application. 'Just add a login button' becomes 'actually, add SSO, role-based access, audit logging, and a custom admin dashboard.' Each addition seems small, but combined they turn a one-day task into a three-month project. AI makes it worse because 'just one more thing' feels effortless.
Real Talk
Scope creep is the uncontrolled expansion of project requirements beyond the original specification. It occurs through incremental additions that individually seem reasonable but collectively derail timelines and budgets. In AI-assisted development, the low friction of code generation can accelerate scope creep as stakeholders discover how quickly features can be prototyped.
When You'll Hear This
"We started with a contact form and ended up building a CRM — classic scope creep." / "The scope creep on this project has been unreal."
Related Terms
Feature Flag
A feature flag is a toggle that lets you turn features on or off without deploying new code.
MVP (MVP)
An MVP is the simplest version of your product that actually works well enough for real users to use and for you to learn from.
Sprint
A sprint is a fixed time-box — usually 1-2 weeks — where a team commits to completing a specific set of tasks.
User Story
A user story is a tiny description of a feature from the user's perspective, written in plain English: 'As a user, I want to reset my password, so that I c...
YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It)
Don't build stuff you don't need right now.