#scopeCreep

[nareshkumartech]

Managing Scope Creep in Small Development Teams

In the fast-paced world of game development, scope creep can quietly derail even the most promising projects—especially for small development teams. Scope creep refers to the gradual expansion of a project’s goals, features, or deliverables beyond the original plan, often without corresponding increases in resources or time. For small teams already stretched thin, unmanaged scope creep can lead to missed deadlines, burnout, and ultimately, unfinished or compromised games. Understanding how to recognize and control scope creep is crucial for maintaining focus, delivering quality, and keeping the development cycle on track.

One of the primary reasons scope creep occurs is the lack of a well-defined project scope at the beginning. Small teams, often driven by passion and creativity, may start with a simple idea that quickly snowballs as new “cool” features are added. While ambition is a strength, it needs to be grounded in realism. Having a clear, detailed game design document that outlines core mechanics, art requirements, and technical goals creates a foundation that the team can refer back to. This document serves as a compass during development, helping determine what fits the vision and what’s an unnecessary detour.

Communication also plays a vital role in managing scope. In small teams where everyone wears multiple hats, it’s easy for assumptions to be made or decisions to be implemented without full team consensus. Holding regular check-ins and progress meetings ensures that any proposed changes to scope are openly discussed and evaluated. These conversations help identify whether new ideas align with the project’s objectives or risk derailing the timeline. Establishing a change control process—even a lightweight one—can help filter out impulsive additions and keep the focus on features that matter.

Another practical approach to prevent scope creep is using milestones and setting hard feature cutoffs. Dividing the project into manageable phases with clear deliverables keeps the team oriented and creates natural checkpoints to reassess progress. If a new feature is suggested mid-development, it can be evaluated against current priorities. If it’s not mission-critical, it should be saved for post-launch updates or a potential sequel. This mindset encourages discipline and helps small teams stay agile without overextending themselves.

It’s also important to accept that limitations can fuel creativity. Many successful indie games thrived because they focused on doing a few things exceptionally well rather than trying to include everything. Features should be chosen based on their contribution to the player experience, not their novelty. A streamlined, polished game will always be more appealing than one overloaded with half-finished mechanics.

In small team game development, managing scope isn’t about saying “no” to every new idea—it’s about making smart, strategic decisions that serve the game and the team. By clearly defining scope, maintaining open communication, and using milestones to stay focused, small teams can avoid the pitfalls of scope creep and bring their creative visions to life successfully.

[projectmanagertemplate]

In this blog we will explore how to effectively define the boundaries of a project, why these boundaries are important, and how to communicate them with all stakeholders involved. Whether you’re managing a small task or a large-scale initiative, understanding and establishing clear project boundaries is key to delivering results on time and within budget.

[cyber-soul-smartz]

21st Century Time Management Techniques for Project Managers

Discover essential time management strategies for project managers to meet deadlines and stay within budget! Learn from Hafsa Reasoner on Empowered Journey. Don't miss out—subscribe now for more insights on mastering project management in the 21st Century

[smallblueandloud]

i wrote 2k today :D and it was for two fics that had stalled!! so that's really exciting

[starlitcarnivalstudios]

Time to Cut

NaNoRenO started today! I'm very excited. So I sat down to write down my to-do list and as i did it kept growing and growing and growing. I felt a pain in my chest but I shoved down the panic.

It was time to cut! So right now I'm making some hard decisions and deciding what stays and what goes. The good thing is that if this does well, I plan to expand it to a full-size game. So I just have to think of it as the demo or episode 1.

Now back to work!

[engiiiiiii]

planning my dream game to have complex dialogue and a world that revolves around your choices is totally a good idea. I'll never burn out or get overwhelmed. this will work perfectly

[ribbix3d]

Another discard project I was working on.

You played as a knight exploring a dungeon long forgotten, with your loyal squire lighting the way for you. Was meant to be a small project with one dungeon (because one level shouldn't be too hard right?) but scopecreep 🤷 UE5 uses a lot of resources, and I was relying on asset libaries for much of the enviroment and the animations, which dumps a lot of files into your project and makes things kind of difficult to navigate.

Combat felt a bit too simple, and since i was relying on miximo assets it was difficult to get out of that hole.

Level was also pretty big and i kept getting lost in the maze. That being said i would like to reappropriate a lot of the worldbuilding and level design i did into somekind of ttrpg module.

[shuruzy]

I keep wanting to expand the playable coto cast even if it feels like scopecreep, I... want a number divisible by 3. so either Deka has to go or i gotta make TWO MORE AEGIS?!?!

[legolasghosty]

you're on a roll so i'm gonna do another bigger goal :D

116 please

Hehe it's great what you can get done when the only things you have to do in a day are reading documents you don't want to and managing your dad's scopecreep planning. But be warned, the angst has begun...

She left the bathroom and hurried up the stairs toward her room. Probably smart to put some actual clothes on for this type of conversation. Once changed, she ducked through the door, only to smack straight into Bobby standing right outside.

“Ouch, seriously?” he groaned, stumbling back a pace. “Oh, Julie, sorry.”

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t expecting you to be there. Sorry. Um, is Caleb still here?”

Bobby frowned. “Yeah, but I wanted to talk to you-”

“Oh thank goodness,” she breathed, relieved. “Any idea where he is? I really need to talk to him.”

“Um, he was headed for the back balcony last I saw him, but Jules there’s something I should-”

“Great, thanks Bobby, you’re the best,” Julie cut him off, already slipping past him and heading for the back of the house.

(Send me a number and I'll write that many words in my WIP and show you!)

[ravennanightcrown]

[maniacal laughing] a friend shared a storytelling concept that gave me ideas (as usual), and now i am going insane. I am going to rehaul (sort of; the fic is still a wip and it's not going to be a complete rework) my wip to achieve my vision.

It acted as an anti-scopecreep and anti-inaccessibility at the same time lmao. (My original plans got derailed by me wanting to make this hostile and even bigger in scope, and thankfully myself again got derailed into limiting the scope by going more insane on other elements. Wehe.)

I intend to make this wip a formatting fuckery hell paradise. For me. 😈

(i am getting the vibe that the [redacted] rehaul might actually motivate me to write more)

[projectmanagertemplate]

Project management has its own set of buzzwords and jargon. Understanding these terms is essential for effective communication, collaboration, and successful project execution. Whether you're an experienced project manager or just starting out, this comprehensive list of project management buzzwords will help you stay ahead

[zwoelffarben]

#hi op#how's the project going?#timed from @horrifiedanomaly

I'm still working on it, but I've gotten it to a point where I've unhappily put Command Statistics v0.5.0-1.20.4 on modrinth for an open alpha to hopefully field feedback. So far, no one has taken me up on that.

At Time of posting I was working on v0.3.0 which was finished when I finally figured out how to get Stats.CUSTOM to work (read: someone in a discord told me how to make it work, and then I implemented it completely differently (but hey, it works)). It let you query statistics, and increase(add), reduce, and set statistics from integers. At this point, the mod already performed the task it was created to perform: Everything after this is the scopecreep of a perfectionist.

In v0.4.0, I added the record execution mood, which lets you save a stat's value to a scoreboard objective.

and In v0.5.0, I added the ability to increase(add), reduce, and set statistics from scoreboard objectives, as well as adding some very rudimentary feedback to all execution moods.

Currently, I'm about maybe a half-third done with v0.6.0 which will improve feedback from rudimentary to polished. I'm building the mod for robust translations allowing for,... 16 grammar conjugations, which i'm incorrectly calling genders in code because it's close enough to the correct terminology, and I expect if anyone ever wants to translate to german, they actually have three grammatical genders and I'm using five grammatical genders for us-en, which is strictly speaking a genderless language (i'm treating -s and -es pluralization as well as 'a' and 'an' indefinite article pairing as four distinct overlapping 'genders' plus a special bonus gender for things which are pairs of things). For v0.6.0, I'm just gonna do the general stats.

v0.7.0 will be dedicated to building the custom stat feedbacks, since all of those 70~ish messages are gonna need to be... handcrafted.

v0.8.0 is gonna be dedicated to one particular bug that I'm aware of but isn't strictly speaking a problem so much as a lack of polish.

v0.9.* are gonna be for any feature requests I get that I decide are worth implementing, as well as commenting the fuck out of my code for me and future archivists.

and then v1.0 is gonna be a polished turd of a buggy mess, but it's gonna function!

Woo I'm modding minecraft!

[crtzmo]

Scope Creep • Korakuen — Bunkyō, Tokyo #mitaline #korakuenstation #tokyometro #subwaystation #scopecreep #CCwalks (at Bunkyō, Tokyo) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdcBHg6J0PG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[randombusinessoflawthoughts]

#ReadFirstLegal: 'Measuring Against Nothing (Or, Budgets Without Scope Aren’t Really Budgets)' by Toby Brown

Excellent article by Toby Brown on the 3 Geeks blog. Definitely a #readfirstlegal recommendation! https://www.geeklawblog.com/2023/06/measuring-against-nothing-or-budgets-without-scope-arent-really-budgets.html

#pricing #legal #auslaw #value #LPM #scope #scopecreep #budget

[thomasafowler]

Made this at lunch because unrealistic promises/expectations drive me up a wall! . . . . . . . . #production #clients #clientexpectations #underpromise #overdeliver #advertising #video#digital #web #websites #interactive #producer #marketing #estimates #scope #scopecreep (at Denver, Colorado)