glossary — plain english
Scope creep
The plan quietly growing while the deadline stays put — one small, reasonable addition at a time, none of them decided out loud.
No one ever decides to blow the deadline. Scope creep is what happens instead: a small ask here ("while you're in there…"), an obvious improvement there ("it would be silly not to…"), each one too reasonable to refuse and too small to re-plan around. Three weeks later the project is a third bigger and the launch date hasn't moved, which means the plan is now fiction.
A visible timeline is decent armor, because it converts invisible costs into visible ones. On a chart, "just one more thing" has to physically land somewhere — a new bar pushes the bars after it, and everyone can watch the milestone diamond slide right. The conversation changes from "sure, no problem" to "yes, and here's what it moves."
When new scope really is worth it, there are only four honest responses: move the date, add people, cut something else, or say no. Scope creep is the fifth response — pretending you don't have to pick — and comparing this week's chart against the baseline is how you catch yourself doing it.
See it on a real chart
Describe your project in plain English and ganttchart.ai turns it into a shareable Gantt chart in seconds — every term on this page included. Or read the method first: the plain-English planning guide.