All categories/Product and design
Requirements and product · Level Advanced · Product Scope Product
Scope change: mid-flight requests
Halfway through, more scope arrives.
Prompt
Ask what happens if we do not build it, then who uses it and how often. If those have no answer, it does not get scheduled.
Task: Halfway through, more scope arrives.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- the change and its reason
- impact on schedule
- can it ship later
- who decides
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- assess impact on time, quality and other features
- three options: swap, delay, split
- make them name what is dropped
- log the change to stop open-ended additions
[Process]
1. Reconstruct what the user actually does
2. Decide whether this is a need or a proposed solution
3. Offer build, do not build, or another way
4. Write checkable acceptance criteria
5. Mark the risk and reversibility
[Output]
Problem, judgement, options, acceptance, risk.
[Do not]
- Never copy the requester's solution
- No scheduling without a usage scene
- No acceptance criteria like 'improve experience'
- Never three features at onceWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- the change and its reason
- impact on schedule
- can it ship later
- who decides
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- assess impact on time, quality and other features
- three options: swap, delay, split
- make them name what is dropped
- log the change to stop open-ended additions