The Scope Creep I Let In on Purpose
Last time I wrote, I'd just surfaced after a bad day and set a new heading: one master copy in Word, quality fixed, time allowed to flex. I'm happy to report the new heading held. Mostly.
Day one was a good day
The move to Word did what I hoped. I edit in one place now, and CoPilot checks each section as I go — a second pair of eyes on quality without a second pipeline to babysit. After weeks of fighting three formats at once, working in a single tool felt like taking the weight vest off. Fast, calm, straight lines.
Day two ran out of road
Then I hit a wall that had nothing to do with the book. I ran out of tokens for the month. Fair enough, I did not have the premium licence for CoPilot and a large document like a book is leaning hard on the tools. But the fix wasn't a simple "upgrade and carry on": the licence I was on meant upgrading required creating a whole new account. An hour I hadn't budgeted, spent on plumbing instead of prose.
It's a small thing to complain about and I won't dwell on it, except to note the obvious: the interruptions that hurt most are rarely the dramatic ones. They're the admin. A penguin doesn't usually drown in a storm. It gets caught out by the small stuff — a current it didn't read, an edge it misjudged. Anyway. New account, back in the water, on course.
The thing I actually want to talk about
Here's the interesting decision. With the book finally visible as one document, something became obvious that a pile of separate files had hidden: three of the major project-management disciplines were barely covered. Cost. Scope. Quality. Each one was getting a passing mention somewhere and a proper home nowhere.
So I had a choice to make, and it's the exact choice the book is about. Do I add three chapters this late — and invite scope creep, the very thing that mugged me a week ago? Or do I ship what I have and live with the gap?
I've been building this book with a vibe-driven, one-format-at-a-time approach, and that approach has a known failure mode: it's easy to keep adding "just one more good idea" until the thing never ships. A project manager should feel the alarm going off here. I did.
But scope creep isn't automatically the enemy. Sometimes the scope was simply wrong, and creep is just the plan catching up with reality. The test I used was the one I'd already locked in during the bad week: quality is the fixed corner. If a change makes the deliverable genuinely more fit for purpose, it earns its place. If it's polish, it waits.
Three chapters covering three core PM disciplines, in a book about project management? That's not polish. That's a hole in the floor. So they're in.
The irony is not lost on me. To protect the book's quality I let in scope creep — and the chapters I let in are Quality, Scope, and Cost. I added a Scope chapter as an act of scope management. I'll be dining out on that one for a while.
The new delivery plan
Adding three chapters costs time, and time is the corner I said could flex — so it flexes. Rather than hold everything back, I've split the finish line. The Kindle edition ships on time. The paperback follows a little later, once the new chapters are properly drafted and the print layout has caught up. Digital first, print second: the reverse of where I started a fortnight ago, and the right way round for where I am now.
That's the whole point of the book, really, tested on its author again. The plan you're willing to change is worth more than the plan you defend — as long as you change it against a fixed principle, not a passing mood. Quality held the line. Everything else was allowed to move.
Back under. Three chapters heavier, but swimming toward a date I can actually hit.
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