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"Creep" refers to a sequence of small changes that can accumulate to cause substantial difficulties in the execution of a project. Each small change on its own may seem so insignificant that it can be overlooked by project management. You may think that you can neglect the little changes that take place along the way, but if you don't address them as they accrue, and they continue to add up, they can create both tremendous changes in the schedule and serious cost overruns. So, it's very important for you to figure out how to manage the different types of creep effectively.

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“Scope creep” is the uncontrolled expansion of the amount of work to be done on the project. Strictly speaking, it's any change in the project to be delivered that was not part of the original project plan. In general, scope creep is customer-driven and comes from trying to meet a new requirement that may not have been formally introduced into the system. It's driven by the customer or somehow done to please the customer. It's very important that the project manager understands the impacts of each one of these changes so that a decision can be made about whether or not the request will be accommodated and how it will happen. "How," in this case, means a timeline accommodation and likely a resource assignment accommodation. Just because it might please the customer to expand the work, it still affects the project and the organization; if it's important enough to be done, it needs to be done in a way that's consistent with resource availability and milestone timelines or the requests have to be modified.

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"Effort creep" takes place when the progress on a project by a team member isn't proportional to the amount of effort they have expanded. It's taking longer than anticipated. For team members who appear to have this issue, it's important for the project manager to get frequent updates so he or she can identify any difficulties and try to get ahead of the problem. Effort creep can be caused by communication issues between team members. It can happen because of a slow interface between one activity and the next. It could be that the team member has a weakness in their skill set for a particular task and will need help to find a way to get that task done. It may be that the effort estimates for that activity were, in fact, too low, given the task complexity. The project manager just needs to know it and adjust accordingly. One of the critical tasks for a project manager is to refrain from assigning blame; the goal is to figure out as much as you can about how the team member got to this point so that you can help resolve the problem. To build trust with your team members, it is important to get a handle on these things as early as possible.

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“Hope creep” is created by a team member. Sometimes a team member falls behind on a task, but they believe they can get back on schedule and make it on time. They make a conscious choice not to make the project manager aware of the difficulties. They're not doing it to be dishonest or malicious, or to cover up an imperfect performance. They're doing it because they genuinely think that they can get back to where they need to be without causing chaos for the project manager. In reality, many times that hope doesn't come to fruition and it turns out that the task runs late and affects the whole project. The real problem is that the project manager hasn't been made aware of it early enough to try to make accommodations. So, as the task goes late, other people are standing around waiting to begin other activities. Assignment changes need to be made quickly with a much smaller time window to make this transition a smooth one. It's very important for the project manager to verify progress reports made by team members and not simply collect status reports. You can ask for demos, you can walk through some pieces of the work project together, you can ask questions: How far are you? How did that step happen? That will give you reason to believe that what you're being told is, in fact, correct. And remember, it's not about maliciousness, it's about people genuinely trying to do their work and not wanting to disappoint anyone else on their team. That, really, is what leads to hope creep.

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"Team-member scope creep" is also referred to as "gold plating." It happens when a team member (or members, plural) adds extra features to their work to please the customer or to illustrate their competence. Work is a source of pride for people. Being able to do something better than anticipated can make people feel very good. And the team members are probably not doing this to cause problems down the road, but they may not realize that when they add extra effort or additional features, the customer may not really want that. From a team member's vantage point in the organization, they may not have enough direct customer insight to make a correct judgment about what's necessary or what should be added. Therefore, it is possible that the customer may not find this new feature worthwhile. It's also possible that if one employee decides independently to add what he thinks is an excellent feature, thinking that it's just a little bit of extra work for him, this can cause problems for someone else in some other part of the project. For project managers dealing with team-member scope creep: yes, you want to allow your team members to shine, you want them to be able to show their technical prowess. That is meaningful to people and it will keep them engaged and wanting to keep working. But there needs to be a formal process to consider all changes to project scope that takes into consideration what it will mean to accommodate that change in other parts of the project. The goal is to end up with a very thoughtful decision about whether or not this new feature should be added. And you will also want to know how the customer will respond before you allow the team member to put in the extra work.