Scope Creep or Strategic Pivot? How to Manage Changing Requirements Without Derailing Your Project

It’s a familiar story, played out in boardrooms and broadcast across news channels. A major programme, launched with fanfare and a confident budget, slowly, then suddenly, goes off the rails. Timelines stretch, costs balloon, and the promised benefits recede over the horizon. We are a nation that builds things, but we often do so at a staggering, unnecessary cost. The Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) is currently valued at a colossal £834 billion.1 Yet this portfolio is haunted by a history of failure, epitomised by projects like HS2, where initial funding envelopes have become footnotes to cost estimates that could approach £80 billion.1 The Committee of Public Accounts calls this a “failure of governance and oversight” 4, a pattern repeated across the public sector, from Northern Ireland’s £3.03 billion in capital project overruns 5 to the Ministry of Defence’s £16.9 billion equipment affordability gap.6
This isn’t a problem for project managers to solve with a new Gantt chart. The line between a project that haemorrhages money through “scope creep” and one that intelligently adapts through a “strategic pivot” is drawn at the leadership level. It is a test of governance, foresight, and courage. The uncomfortable question every leader must ask is this: are you governing change, or is it governing you?
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What you’ll learn

• How to use a simple decision tree to distinguish value-destroying creep from a value-creating pivot.
• Why Agile rituals, often misunderstood as chaotic, are your most powerful tools for enforcing discipline and control.
• How to rescue a failing project with a courageous pivot, using the £34 billion turnaround of Universal Credit as a case study.

The Anatomy of Failure: Why Good Intentions Derail

Project failure is rarely caused by a single event, but by a confluence of systemic weaknesses that leaders can—and must—address.
The statistics paint a grim picture. A National Audit Office (NAO) guide notes that two-thirds of public sector projects are completed late, over budget, or fail to deliver expected outcomes.7 For IT projects, the situation is even more acute, with one study finding that 81% of public sector IT projects overrun their schedules, compared to 52% in the private sector.8 The NAO has been clear that these “repeated delays and cost overruns in digital delivery undermine government’s ability to achieve its policy objectives”.10 These aren’t isolated incidents; they are symptoms of deeper, systemic issues.

Optimism Bias & Perverse Incentives

At the very start of the project lifecycle lies a fundamental flaw: optimism bias. The NAO identifies this as a key cause of project failure, describing it as a tendency to overestimate benefits and underestimate costs.7 This isn’t merely a psychological quirk; it’s often a “strategically motivated perverse incentive” designed to get a project over the initial funding hurdle.7 The HS2 programme is a case in point, where “overly optimistic budget and delivery estimates” were cited as a foundational reason for its later struggles.1 When a business case is, from its inception, a work of fiction designed to secure approval, it bakes failure in from day one.

Immature Design and Unclear Scope

The pressure to get started often means projects are initiated before the “what” is truly understood. The HS2 reset was necessary in part because the design was “too immature” at the point of commissioning.1 This immaturity creates a vacuum that is inevitably filled by uncontrolled change. It is no surprise that a lack of clear goals is cited as the most common factor for project failure, accounting for 37% of cases.8 When the scope is poorly defined, it becomes porous, allowing unapproved requirements and features to seep in, slowly but surely derailing the plan.11

Reality Check

When governance fails, the costs multiply. During the HS2 programme, deferring work to meet short-term annual budgets was found to be disastrously counter-productive. HS2 Ltd’s own modelling indicated that for every £1 of civil engineering work deferred, the total cost increased by an additional £1.25 due to factors like demobilisation and remobilisation.1

Broken Governance and Funding Models

Even with a perfect plan, the structures for managing and funding projects can be their undoing. The government’s own reviews point to “outdated funding models” and “institutionalised fragmentation” as deep-seated challenges.13 For long-term infrastructure projects, short-term annual budget settlements provide “poor value for money”.4 As the HS2 example shows, forcing a project to defer work to fit within an annual budget doesn’t save money; it actively increases the total cost.1
This creates a vicious cycle. The initial optimistic business case leads to an immature project start. The poorly defined scope is then vulnerable to uncontrolled change. When costs inevitably escalate, rigid annual funding cycles force value-destroying deferrals, which further damages trust and political support, often leading to a “reset” that addresses the symptoms rather than the root cause of poor governance.1 The problem is not a series of isolated project management mistakes; it is a systemic loop where governance, funding, and political culture conspire to make failure the most likely outcome.

The People Cost of Legacy IT

The challenge isn’t confined to new builds. It’s compounded by the immense “technical debt” of existing systems. The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) highlights “persistent legacy, cyber and resilience risk” 13 and “costly and outdated technology” 14 as major impediments to progress. The NAO warns of the “unmeasured ‘people cost’ to not modernising operational services” 15—the hidden daily drag on productivity, morale, and the ability to deliver effective services that rarely appears on a balance sheet but is felt acutely by staff and citizens alike.
Breaking this cycle requires intervention at the leadership level. It demands a shift from simply managing projects to actively governing the systems within which they operate.

The Two Faces of Change: A Leader’s Decision Framework

Scope creep is an unmanaged reaction that erodes value; a strategic pivot is a managed response that creates it.
In the life of any complex programme, change is the only constant. New information emerges, user needs evolve, policies shift. The critical task for a leader is to distinguish between two fundamentally different types of change: the insidious, value-destroying parasite of scope creep, and the courageous, value-creating leap of a strategic pivot.

Defining the Enemy: Scope Creep

The Project Management Institute (PMI) provides a crisp definition of scope creep: “adding additional features or functions… without addressing the effects on time, costs, and resources, or without customer approval”.18 It is change by stealth. It often begins with the best of intentions—a project manager wanting to please a key stakeholder with “just one small addition”.19 But these small additions accumulate, like death by a thousand cuts, leading to severe consequences: blown budgets, missed deadlines, exhausted teams, and compromised quality.11 It is an uncontrolled reaction to pressure, and it is almost always a net negative.

Defining the Opportunity: The Strategic Pivot

A strategic pivot, in contrast, is an act of deliberate, conscious leadership. The Agile Alliance defines it as “a significant shift in strategy, direction, or approach… based on validated learning and market feedback”.20 It is not a random change of direction but a calculated course correction driven by new evidence.21 Pivoting isn’t an admission of failure; it’s proof of learning. It allows a programme to preserve the knowledge it has gained while redirecting its energy towards a more valuable or achievable goal.20 It is the courage to change the plan when the facts on the ground have changed.

The Pivot vs. Creep Decision Tree

For a leader in a project review meeting, faced with a request for change, the challenge is to separate the signal from the noise. This simple decision tree can help.
Question 1: Does this proposed change align with the core strategic objective of the programme?

• Path 1: No → Potential Creep. If the change does not directly serve the primary mission, it is likely noise. It might be a “nice-to-have” or a stakeholder’s pet feature.
  • Action: Immediately subject it to your formal change control process.19 Insist on a documented request that evaluates the full impact on cost, schedule, resources, and risk. Force a conscious trade-off decision. The default answer must be “no” unless a new, compelling business case justifies its inclusion. This discipline filters out low-value distractions.
• Path 2: Yes → Potential Pivot. If the change does serve the core objective, but perhaps in a different way than originally envisioned, proceed to the next question.

Question 2: Is this change driven by validated learning or significant new evidence?

• Action (If Yes): This is a candidate for a strategic pivot. The evidence might be powerful user feedback, a fundamental shift in government policy, a disruptive technology, or a competitor’s move. The response should not be to simply approve the single change, but to re-evaluate the project’s entire direction.
  • Goal: Re-assess the plan.
  • Action: Commission a “lean business case update.” Re-examine the value proposition, the costs, and the benefits in light of this new information.
  • Result: A conscious, documented decision to change course, complete with a new plan, a revised budget, and updated success metrics. This is active governance.
• Action (If No): If the change serves the goal but isn’t backed by new evidence, it is likely “gold-plating.” It’s an attempt to improve something that is already fit for purpose.
  • Action: Reject it via the change control process. While it may seem beneficial, it consumes resources that could be better spent on the core, prioritised deliverables.

This framework shifts the conversation from “Can we do this?” to “Should we do this?” and “What is the evidence that justifies this change?”.

The Agile Armoury: Using Rituals for Rigour

Agile isn’t the absence of a plan; it’s a framework for managing a plan in a world of constant change.
A common and dangerous misconception among senior leaders is that Agile means “chaos,” an undisciplined free-for-all.24 This could not be further from the truth. The NAO explicitly states that the idea of looser governance for Agile programmes is “not justified”.25 In fact, the UK Government Service Manual mandates an Agile approach precisely because its rituals provide a powerful framework for enforcing rigour and control while responding to change.26 For leaders, these rituals are not project management jargon; they are instruments of governance.

Discipline 1: The Sprint Goal as a Shield

In Agile, work is conducted in short, time-boxed periods called sprints, typically lasting one to four weeks.27 Every sprint begins with the team committing to a
Sprint Goal—a single, concise objective for what they will achieve in that period.28 This isn’t just a to-do list; it’s the “why” that gives the work purpose and focus.29
From a governance perspective, the Sprint Goal is a shield. For the duration of the sprint, it is immutable. If a stakeholder has a brilliant new idea on day three, it does not get shoehorned into the current sprint. The team remains focused on the agreed-upon goal. The new idea is captured and placed in the product backlog to be prioritised and considered for a future sprint. This simple rule provides an invaluable airlock against distraction. It forces a pause, creating a natural queue for new ideas and filtering out impulsive, low-value requests. It protects the delivery team and ensures that progress is made on agreed priorities.

Discipline 2: Work-in-Progress (WIP) Limits as a Bottleneck Detector

A core principle in many Agile frameworks, particularly Kanban, is the use of Work-in-Progress (WIP) limits. This is simply a rule that sets the maximum number of tasks that can be in any single stage of a workflow at one time.30 For example, a team might agree that no more than three items can be in the “In Review” column of their board simultaneously.
This seemingly minor constraint is a powerful governance tool. It combats scope creep at a micro-level by preventing individuals from starting new work before their current tasks are finished. It forces a culture of “done” over a culture of “busy”.30 More importantly for leaders, WIP limits make bottlenecks painfully visible. When a column hits its limit and turns red on the project board, work grinds to a halt. The team cannot pull new tasks until the blockage is cleared. This forces them to “swarm” on the problem, collaborating to resolve it. For a leader, this is a real-time diagnostic tool. It flags systemic issues—slow sign-offs from another department, delays in getting access to a test environment, an over-burdened specialist—that are impeding flow and require senior intervention to resolve.30

Discipline 3: The Release Goal as a Coherent Narrative

While sprints provide short-term focus, a Release Plan provides medium-term strategic direction. It batches multiple sprints together to deliver a coherent, meaningful change in the user experience or business capability.32 At the heart of this is the
Release Goal, which defines the overall purpose of that collection of sprints.33 For example, a release goal might be “Enable users to complete their annual self-assessment entirely on a mobile device.”
The Release Goal acts as a strategic anchor, preventing the product from becoming a “random collection of features” delivered sprint by sprint.32 Every Sprint Goal must logically contribute to the overarching Release Goal. This creates a clear line of sight from daily work to strategic intent. When a significant new change is proposed, it can be evaluated against the Release Goal. If it doesn’t align, it is either deferred to a future release with a different goal, or it triggers a conscious, strategic decision to
pivot the Release Goal itself. This elevates the conversation from a tactical change request to a strategic re-evaluation, ensuring that medium-term plans remain coherent and value-focused.
These three rituals form a nested system of governance operating on different timescales. Sprint Goals provide tactical, short-term (weekly) protection. WIP Limits offer real-time operational control. Release Goals ensure medium-term (quarterly) strategic alignment. For a leader, this is a powerful dashboard. In any review, they can ask: “Does this new request align with the current Sprint Goal? If not, it waits. Does it align with the Release Goal? If not, we need a strategic discussion. And are our WIP limits showing any systemic blockages that I need to help unblock?” This reframes Agile from a developer methodology into a leadership governance framework.
At Devsultants, we have extensive experience helping organisations implement these practices. Our DV/SC-cleared delivery teams understand that in high-stakes, secure environments, Agile is not about abandoning control; it’s about implementing a more effective and responsive system of governance. We help leaders build the operating models that turn these rituals into genuine rigour.

Funding for Reality: The Resilient Budget and the Living Business Case

Your budget shouldn’t be a static constraint; it should be a dynamic tool that enables intelligent, value-focused change.
As established, one of the primary drivers of project failure in the public sector is the mismatch between how projects are funded and how they are delivered. Rigid, annualised funding cycles are poison for long-term, complex programmes where learning and adaptation are essential.4 They incentivise teams to hide problems to protect their funding for the next year and lead to value-destroying stop-start cycles when arbitrary financial deadlines are missed. A modern approach to governance requires a modern approach to funding.

A Better Way 1: The Change Budget

The first step is to acknowledge a simple truth: change is inevitable. Pretending it won’t happen and funding projects with a single, monolithic budget and a token contingency figure is a recipe for failure. A more resilient approach is to create a dedicated, ring-fenced change budget.
This was a key success factor for the London 2012 Olympics programme, which used a sophisticated three-tier contingency model.1 This included project-level contingency for known risks, programme-level contingency for larger unforeseen issues, and a top-level contingency for major systemic risks. This structure provides a transparent, managed fund specifically for responding to change. It moves change from being a threat to the budget to being a managed, anticipated part of the programme. Access to this change budget is not a free-for-all; it is strictly governed by the formal change control process, ensuring that every pound spent is a conscious, value-based decision.

A Better Way 2: The Living Business Case

The UK Government’s standard for developing and appraising spending proposals is the robust Five Case Model (covering the Strategic, Economic, Commercial, Financial, and Management cases), which sits alongside HM Treasury’s Green Book guidance.35 This provides an excellent foundation for ensuring a project is viable and offers value for money at the outset.
However, in an Agile world where change is expected, the business case cannot be a historical document that is written once, approved, and then filed away to gather dust. It must be a living document that evolves with the programme. This is where the concept of the Lean Business Case Update comes in.
When a programme undergoes a significant strategic pivot, it must not be allowed to proceed on the old assumptions. The SRO has a duty to re-validate that the project still represents good value for taxpayer money.

• Goal: To rapidly re-validate the project’s value for money following a pivot.
• Action: The team must quickly update the key components of the Five Case Model. This means re-running the numbers for the Economic Case based on the new scope and revised benefits. It means re-assessing the Management Case to ensure the team has the right skills and structure for the new direction. It means updating the Financial Case with revised costings and funding requirements.
• Result: A lightweight but rigorous addendum to the original business case is produced. Once approved by the SRO and the relevant finance and investment committees, it provides a clear audit trail for the change in direction and re-affirms that the programme remains a worthwhile investment. This turns the business case from a static hurdle into a dynamic governance tool.

This is a core area of Devsultants’ expertise. We specialise in developing robust business cases using the Five Case Model and creating the governance wrappers needed to make them work for Agile delivery. We help leaders build these “living” financial models that satisfy the rigour of HM Treasury Green Book requirements while enabling the flexibility needed to deliver complex programmes successfully.

Case Study in Courage: The £34 Billion Turnaround of Universal Credit

The UK’s biggest welfare reform was saved from disaster not by sticking to the plan, but by having the courage to pivot.
The story of Universal Credit (UC) is perhaps the UK’s most potent example of both large-scale project failure and remarkable recovery. By 2013, the programme was on the verge of collapse. It was years behind its original seven-year schedule, vastly over budget, and the subject of intense, negative scrutiny from Parliament, the media, and the public.36 The initial approach was deeply flawed, characterised by underinvestment in policy design and a catastrophic failure to engage with the needs of its future users.36 It was, by any measure, a failing programme.

The Leadership Pivot

The turnaround began with a change in leadership and a series of courageous, evidence-based pivots. A new, stable leadership team took control from 2014 and made several critical decisions that went against the grain of traditional programme management.38
First, they made the big call. The programme had been pursuing a “twin track” approach with two different IT systems. The original, outsourced “Live Service” was failing spectacularly. Based on emerging evidence from a small, in-house team building an alternative “Full Service,” the leadership made the high-risk decision to terminate the failing system entirely and pivot all resources to the new, still-unproven one.38 This was not a minor course correction; it was a fundamental strategic bet on a new way of working.
Second, they pivoted the culture. The new leadership fostered an environment of psychological safety, trusting their teams and empowering them to solve problems. The focus shifted from rigid adherence to deliverables to a relentless focus on outcomes.38 They embraced a “test and learn” approach, valuing the insights gained from iteration as much as the delivery itself.
Third, they pivoted their communications. Faced with a torrent of negative press, the leadership team didn’t hide. They went on the offensive, running national newspaper ad campaigns and, in a move of radical transparency, inviting BBC and Channel 4 film crews inside job centres and the programme itself to show what was really happening.38 They chose to fight the inaccurate external narrative by showing the reality, rebuilding trust through openness.

The Evidence of Success: The Pivot’s Pay-off

The results of this strategic pivot are documented in the 2018 Full Business Case for the programme. The turnaround was so successful that the project, once a byword for failure, was forecast to deliver a staggering £34 billion in net economic value to the UK over ten years, on a total investment cost of £2 billion.39
The quantified outcomes of this pivot are a powerful testament to its success:

• Employment: The redesigned system was estimated to move an additional 200,000 people into employment once fully rolled out.40
• Fraud and Error: The superior design and data integration were projected to deliver £7.5 billion in savings from reduced fraud and error.40
• Operational Efficiency: In its steady state, the new UC system was forecast to have annual operational costs £0.3 billion lower than the legacy benefits system it replaced.40

The success of the Universal Credit pivot was not just about changing a piece of technology; it was about fundamentally changing the entire model of delivery and governance. The pivot from the outsourced, waterfall-style “Live Service” to the in-house, iterative “Full Service” was a pivot from a traditional, command-and-control mindset to a modern, Agile, user-centred one. The initial failure was characterised by poor planning and a lack of user engagement, hallmarks of a rigid, top-down approach.36 The recovery was driven by a team that focused on outcomes, trusted its people, and used evidence and feedback to “test and learn”—the core tenets of Agile.38
The lesson for leaders is clear and profound. The Universal Credit story is the ultimate rebuttal to the idea that changing the plan is a sign of weakness. It proves that a well-governed, evidence-based strategic pivot, led with courage and transparency, can rescue a programme from certain failure and go on to deliver immense, quantifiable public value. The £34 billion return is the dividend paid on adopting a modern, digital-native approach to solving a complex socio-technical problem.

What to do on Monday Morning

The line between a billion-pound failure and a landmark success is governance. Change is not a threat to be suppressed; it is a reality to be governed. Your role as a leader is not to prevent change, but to channel it towards value. The tools and frameworks exist to do this, but they require active, engaged leadership to be effective.
Here is a simple, three-step health check you can run on your own portfolio to see where you stand.
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1. Goal: Assess Your Change Process

• Action: Ask your team to produce the formal change log for your most critical programme from the last quarter. Then ask to see the impact assessments for the approved changes.
• Result: The answer will be revealing. If they can produce a clear, documented log with rigorous impact assessments for every change, you have a disciplined process. If what you get is a collection of emails, meeting minutes, or worse, a blank stare, you have an informal culture of scope creep. You are not in control.

2. Goal: Test Your Business Case Resilience

• Action: Sit down with the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) of your most important project. Ask them two questions: “If we had to cut 20% of the remaining scope to save the budget, what would we cut and why?” and “If we were given an extra 20% budget, what would we add to maximise value and why?”
• Result: A leader with a firm grip on their programme will have an immediate, prioritised answer. They will know which features are core to the value proposition and which are peripheral. A leader who is simply executing a pre-defined plan will struggle. Their answer, or lack thereof, will tell you if they are managing for value or just managing a checklist.

3. Goal: Uncover Your Real Blockers

• Action: Look at your team’s project board (e.g., Jira, Trello). Ask them to implement Work-in-Progress (WIP) limits on the key stages of their workflow for one month.
• Result: The board will light up. Columns will turn red where the bottlenecks are. This is not a sign of team failure; it is a data-driven cry for help. It will point you directly to the systemic issues—slow sign-offs from legal, delays in provisioning test environments, dependencies on other overloaded teams—that are throttling your delivery pace. These are the problems that only you, as a leader, have the authority to fix.

Governing change in high-stakes environments is the hardest part of a leader’s job. The line between a strategic pivot and scope creep is often blurred by pressure, politics, and incomplete data.
If this report has raised uncomfortable questions about your own portfolio, that’s a good thing. It’s the first step towards taking control. Devsultants specialises in helping public and enterprise leaders navigate these challenges. We provide the independent expertise for discovery and de-risking, the rigour for business case development, and the cleared, expert teams for complex delivery.
If you’d like a confidential, no-obligation conversation to stress-test your approach, please get in touch. We’re here to help you find your compass.

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