Scope Creep

What this is about

Where a change request is one decision made in the open, creep is a hundred micro-decisions made by nobody. A shot added on set, a second aspect ratio, a subtitle version, one more feedback pass — each arrives by chat, each costs an hour, and the total appears nowhere. The cure is structural rather than personal: a countable scope with named exclusions, one route for every change, and an early first response that quotes a price instead of saying no. Pricing the second small favour is far easier than pricing the twelfth after three weeks of goodwill.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Warning sign: work arriving through chat messages that never reference the agreed scope document
• The first unpriced favour sets the rate for every favour after it
• Track added items in a running list — a pattern is arguable, a single instance is not

With TillyGen

TillyGen turns the brief into countable units, so anything beyond them shows up as an addition rather than an assumption.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.