In this world dwell many creeps
And I've likely met my share.
Some have merely freaked me out,
Others, though, have greyed my hair.
I've been fortunate enough
To have worked with but a few--
Even those were far between
In an excellent work crew.
Since I started programming
For my trade (and daily keep),
Jobs and bosses may have changed,
Yet I still work with a creep.
This creep is neither guy nor gal
Nor a title does it hold.
From its name you might infer
That its methods are not bold.
For all that, it's deadlines' bane;
On morale it havoc wreaks,
Turns release into death-march,
To cram months' work into weeks.
It begins with some small tweaks
(Trivial at the time, it seemed)
Multiplying costs as these
Changes make their way upstream.
But by then the word's gone 'round:
"The design phase isn't done!
Coders are like Santa Claus
Granting wishes by the ton!"
Thus the team with much alarm
Sees the feature-list accrue:
Needs (and wants) so often change
While the deadlines seldom do.
When the tab is tallied for
Bells and whistles duct-taped on,
Bloat and bugs are rife in code
That before could do no wrong.
Some creeps might convince themselves
That their world (or job) will cease
Should their darling feature not
Be a part of this release.
For all I know, creeps believe
That they do no harm or wrong
Choosing to believe instead
That "It shouldn't take that long."
Creeps must come from somewhere else--
So most everyone believes--
Spawning features faster than
Even rabbits can conceive.
But I've yet to meet one who
Was deliberately hired.
Thus the flip-side, sadly, is
That the Scope Creep can't be fired.
There's a bit in managers
In their vision confident.
QA and Tech Support both
Lend a user-centric bent.
To be fair, from time to time,
I confess the creep I see,
Guilty of the self-same crimes,
From the mirror peer at me.
- - - - -
* For those who both work and play outside the software industry, the term "scope creep" refers to features (and sometimes even design and/or infrastructure changes) added to a software release (i.e. a version) after the deadline has already been set. To add injury to insult, Management has been known to compensate by assigning more people to the project at crunch-time...with predictably disruptive results. See Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month for the definitive smack-down of such "wisdom"--along with other sound insights that have been blithely ignored by B-School grads for well over two decades.
