Project scope creep is eroding our profitability, but our finance reports only show the damage weeks after a project closes. What proactive weekly metric can we track to catch scope creep in real-time?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To stop scope creep before it eats your margins, you must track operational leading indicators rather than waiting for lagging post-project financial reports. You need a weekly metric that highlights when a project is consuming more resources than estimated.

Have your operations seat track the ratio of actual hours worked to estimated project progress. For example, if a project is budgeted for one hundred hours and is fifty percent complete, your team should have billed roughly fifty hours. If they have logged seventy hours but the project is only halfway done, you have a scope creep issue.

Another highly effective weekly metric is the number of out-of-scope client requests received. If your project managers are accommodating extra tasks without issuing formal change orders, your profitability will plummet.

Track the weekly number of signed change orders versus total client requests. If you have five requests but zero signed change orders, your team is giving away free work.

By putting these operational metrics on your weekly scorecard, your operations leader can spot troubled projects instantly. They can then bring these issues to your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ and use the IDS® process to solve them before the project closes and your profits are lost.