9 out of 10 producers make this mistake. Are you one of them?

When you’re talking about scope, there’s a massive difference between goals (the outcomes we want), capabilities (how we arrive at the outcomes) and features (what we build to implement the capabilities).

One of the biggest drivers of scope creep I have seen happens when teams frame discussions about scope with clients through the lens of features instead of capabilities.

Say your client’s vision is to create a marketplace that matches craftspeople with charities to raise money for good causes. One goal might be to onboard one new charity per week, which means providing the capability for charities to submit their information and join the platform.

Sign up is the capability.

Sign up is the scope.

Now think of all the features you could design and build to enable that capability. There are so many options. Maybe you allow charities to join using a Google account (or not); perhaps you make a custom form to capture campaign information or integrate Typeform. Maybe there’s just one page with a telephone number on it. The list goes on…

Now here’s the science bit.

When you talk to clients about capabilities, you avoid locking yourself into specific solutions. If, down the line, you discover the features you were planning are too big for the timeline or the budget, the option is always there to implement alternatives.

The capability is the scope, not the feature.

Talk about features with teams and capabilities with clients.

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