Comments on: Eight Tips on How to Manage Feature Creep

By: LW Design

LW Design — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:58:37 +0000

I have a client who things I am a logo vending machine but is reluctant to put money in any longer for further ideas. Problem is he is not making a decision, not knowing what he wants. I have been assertive now in saying that further work will be charged for for any new ideas. I think presenting him with 13 ideas, revising 2 of them with colour variations and modifications 3 times in a shortlist is reasonable enough to now add additional costs for further work. Another thing I find annoying is when the client, on top of this emails his own logo sketch ideas after you have presented a load of ideas already that you were very happy to present.

By: Peter Drinnan

Peter Drinnan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 01:22:33 +0000

I give my biggest thumbs up to items 3 and 5

3. Giving a hand might cost you your arm.
5. Be task-oriented, not vision-oriented.

In my current role as a project manager, I have found that it is really important to stand my ground and not let the client feel they can get things out of me because I seem like a friendly guy. It takes strength to stand firm while maintaining a friendly posture and a smile. The key is to NEVER get angry with a client. The moment you do, you have lost.

By: omegle

omegle — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:40:29 +0000

I have had quite a few clients want the next Myspace. Yet it had nothing to do with their site or product, they just saw the success of Myspace and suddenly wanted me to make them their own version.

By: ranjit

ranjit — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:55:58 +0000

Really its true and great article…

By: Dan Henry

Dan Henry — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 17:30:40 +0000

I think with the way the economy is now, giving invoices can be dangerous for contractors. If we do not get paid, we are consumers too. Remember that

By: Dave Keays

Dave Keays — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:11:52 +0000

When it comes to getting paid, a customer holds the purse strings and therefore is always right. The contractor needs to either be tactful when pointing-out a customers mistakes or be willing to walk away a poorer man.

How can you force either strong planning or small iterations (XP) onto a client who doesn’t see the value? Where a client says “I just want it done right” What am I going to say “I want to do it wrong”?

By: Jacob Gube

Jacob Gube — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:35:39 +0000

@Gemma: We’re trying to spot link spammers as much as possible, but as you can see, with a ton of content and the high-volume of comments this site gets, things slip through the cracks. Last month, we received 18,964 spam comments. About 10-15% of that reaches the moderation queue for manual moderation. That’s 1,800+ comments that might be legit that we have to evaluate manually. That does not factor in spam that doesn’t get caught automatically. Last month, there were 955 comments that were spam that were not caught.

So, I apologize for the inconvenience, but I want you to know that we’re hard at work to make sure the comments are as high-quality as possible without taking away the privilege of leaving comments on the site or taking away the ability to link back to your site because you should get some link juice for the comments you write — and if that increases the number of link spam we get quite dramatically, it’s a price we have to pay so that legit commenters can retain their privilege to mention their URL.

By: Gemma

Gemma — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:21:04 +0000

Some of these people here are copying other people’s comments purely just to get their link in. So annoying, Six Revisions need to clamp down on these people.

Now, back to the article. I’ve been having some thoughts about scope creep. I recognise the difference between scope creep and scope change.

I think what I’m going to try with regards to scope change, I will tell clients that if they wish to change a part of the requirements we’ve decided on, if it’s a minor change and they ask me well in advance, then I will implement it at no further cost, as long as I don’t have to outsource. Otherwise, it’ll be at an extra cost, depending on the timing and on whether I need to outsource.

But for scope creep AKA adding extra features that aren’t in the plan, then it’ll be at extra cost, whether I have to outsource or not. Or the other option is to tell the client that I can implement these extras but it will have to be done under a new contract, as a new project. I.e. the current project is to get the essentials in, and then start a new project to add the extras.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:37:45 +0000

These are eight great tips on how you can manage feature creep, and glad you begun with accept feature creep will happen, this is just part and parcel of web development, but these tips will definitely minimise this!

By: hali yikama

hali yikama — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:49:14 +0000

Very successful and wonderful.