The Creeping Scope in Salesforce Projects: A Cautionary Halloween Tale
- October 31, 2025
- Salesforce Ben | The Drip
It starts the same way every year. A crisp autumn breeze, people putting on their fancy dress. And in the dim light of a project kickoff meeting, a whisper that sends shivers down your spine can be heard: “It’s just one more field.”
This is where it begins. Before you realize what’s happening, you’re face-to-face with a horror every Salesforce team fears the most: the Creeping Scope.
Scope Creep in the Shadows of Salesforce
On the surface, Salesforce projects are a treat. Configurable, extensible, and infinitely flexible – what could go wrong? The power of Salesforce can be used to open the door to almost magical process transformations. But that power must be wielded responsibly, or you risk opening the crypt door to chilling complexity.
How scope creep sneaks in to a project like a vampire at your window:
We are all people pleasers at heart. It’s hard to say no to extra requirements and feature requests. Sure, they may not be in the original brief for the project, but what’s the harm? But be warned, every time you let a stakeholder add a small change, it opens the window for scope creep a little wider. And through that window creeps the scope that will suck the life out of your project.
Listen carefully, and you can hear the siren song of user requests. “What harm can a few custom fields do?” they say. And pretty soon, your org data model looks like a graveyard of unused metadata. “Let’s add another validation rule. It will be so quick and easy to do,” until your users are trapped in a labyrinth of errors. A clarion call for a last-minute integration seemed like a small, harmless incantation until it ensnares your deployment pipeline like a mummy’s curse.
Maybe you have been in an org and encountered a report named something like “Bob’s Report”. Can anyone remember why that report is there? Can anyone remember who Bob is? Just another forgotten soul, another forgotten report for another forgotten requirement. That’s a sure sign the putrefying effect of scope creep has started to infect an org.
Suddenly, your sprint velocity shuffles along like a zombie, your backlog swells with decaying user stories that have been in there so long they are starting to smell. And your once pristine org is strewn with the fetid remains of good intentions gone wrong. When you hear those tempting voices leading you astray, put their ideas and requests in a backlog for a future phase where they belong.
Why Scope Creeps in Salesforce Projects
Just like any good ghost story, there is a reason that the haunting begins:
Salesforce’s Flexibility
If you can dream it, you can build it. But some dreams can turn out to be nightmares!
The enthusiasm to construct anything imaginable, to solve every conceivable problem with a custom build, can lead down a path fraught with peril. Just because a solution can be engineered, a feature can be implemented, or a process can be automated, does not always mean that it should. This is the chilling truth that underlies many a project’s descent into a nightmare of escalating complexity, unforeseen dependencies, and ultimately, user frustration.
Imagine the eager developer, fueled by the promise of complete customization, embarking on a build that seems perfect in theory. Each new piece of functionality, each intricate integration, adds another layer to the system. Initially, it’s exhilarating, the sheer power to manifest a vision. But as the scope creeps, and the elegant simplicity of the initial concept becomes tangled in a web of custom code, triggers, and automations, what was once a happy dream becomes a nightmare.
Shapeshifting Requirements
The domain of the project manager can be treacherous. What seemed like a solid foundation of requirements can quickly become shifting sands of stakeholder expectations. What once appeared to be manageable and clearly defined objectives can grow fur and teeth and claws as stakeholders change their minds with the phases of the moon.
You start to lose control of the beast your backlog has become as it bloats, twists, and mutates, becoming a slavering beast that devours timelines, budgets, and the very sanity of your team.
Underestimating Complexity
In the labyrinthine corridors of Salesforce, a seemingly harmless request for “Just one Flow” often morphs into a spectral fog of automation conflicts. What begins as a singular, well-intentioned automation designed to streamline a process quickly branches into a tangled web of interconnected Flows, Apex triggers, and validation rules.
Each new addition, while solving an immediate problem, subtly introduces the potential for unintended interactions and race conditions. The elegant simplicity of the initial Flow is soon overshadowed by a complex, interdependent system where a change in one automation can ripple unexpectedly through others, leading to data inconsistencies, performance bottlenecks, and a general aura of digital disarray.
This creeping scope, fueled by the desire for efficiency and the ever-present need for customization, transforms a manageable landscape into a haunting challenge for administrators and developers alike, echoing through the Salesforce crypt with the ghostly wails of frustrated users and the silent groans of overwhelmed systems.
Weak Change Control
Without a robust governance framework, innocent-seeming requests can materialize and slip through the cracks, much like a phantom silently gliding through a dense, Halloween-night fog. Initially, these “small requests” appear harmless, hardly worth noticing. However, before anyone truly understands the ramifications or has a chance to intervene, these seemingly minor additions rapidly swell into an unwieldy and chaotic mess.
This unchecked proliferation of requests can undermine system stability, complicate maintenance, and ultimately lead to a system that is difficult to manage, understand, and evolve. The cumulative effect is a tangled web of dependencies and customizations that ensnare progress and innovation, turning what began as simple changes into a source of considerable frustration and inefficiency.
How to Lay Creeping Scope to Rest
To defend your org from creeping horrors, arm yourself with these magical rituals:
Ward Your Project with Strong Governance
In the shadowy depths of any project, a creeping horror lurks, ready to engulf even the most carefully laid out plans of scope creep. To ward off this insidious monster, heed these ancient project management incantations: define scope clearly, or face phantom requirements.
Just as a vampire shies away from sunlight, scope creep recoils from crystal clear definitions. Every deliverable, every feature, and every tiny nuance must be meticulously outlined. Leave no stone unturned, no corner unlit. A vague scope is an open invitation for spectral requirements to materialize from the ether, demanding more effort, more time, and more resources. Use precise language, concrete examples, and avoid ambiguous terms that can be misinterpreted by the living and the undead alike.
Think of your scope document as the warding circle, strong, unyielding, and protecting your project from external influences. Carve exclusions on stone tablets, lest they haunt your project.
Equally important as defining what is in scope is explicitly stating what isn’t. These exclusions are your silver bullets, your garlic against the lurking beast. Engrave them on metaphorical stone tablets, making them immutable and undeniable. If a particular feature, integration, or functionality is not part of the current project, declare it unequivocally.
This proactive approach prevents stakeholders from later claiming these excluded items were always implicitly part of the plan, leading to monstrous overruns. These exclusions serve as a powerful barrier, preventing the ghostly whispers of “just one more thing” from manifesting into real project pain. Get all of your stakeholders to swear a blood oath (or at least sign off).
By following these hallowed principles, you can keep the creeping scope at bay, ensuring your Salesforce project reaches its successful, on-time, and on-budget conclusion, free from the spectral grip of unexpected demands.
Summon a Change Control Ritual
To prevent the creeping scope from becoming a monstrous, unmanageable entity, you must channel all new requests through a robust and meticulously defined change control process. This ritual serves as a critical gatekeeper, ensuring that every proposed alteration to your Salesforce org is thoroughly scrutinized and its potential ramifications fully understood before implementation.
Each new request, whether a minor field addition or a substantial feature enhancement, must be formally documented and submitted. This documentation should clearly articulate the business need, the proposed solution, and any anticipated benefits. Once submitted, the request enters a rigorous evaluation phase.
Beware the Curse of Over-Customization
In the flickering candlelight of your Salesforce implementation, a chilling truth emerges: the allure of endless possibilities can lead to a dreaded curse, the curse of over-customization. While the platform offers incredible flexibility to tailor solutions to your precise needs, heed this warning: “Use clicks, not code, where possible.” This mantra, a beacon in the darkest corners of development, guides you towards efficiency and maintainability.
However, even when the mantra of clicks over code is adhered to, a new horror can arise. Beware of conjuring too many flows, fields, or page layouts. Each addition is like a whispered incantation until those whispers combine to become a roar of complexity. A proliferation of flows, while powerful, can become a tangled web, difficult to debug and even harder to understand. An abundance of custom fields, like phantom limbs, can clutter the user interface and bloat your data model, slowing down performance and increasing technical debt. An endless parade of fields and page layouts can confuse users and make administration a nightmare.
To ward off this creeping scope, embrace the meticulous practice of documentation. Think of your Salesforce documentation as a sacred text, meticulously detailing every Flow, every custom field, every page layout, and every automation. Include purpose, logic, dependencies, and any known limitations. This grimoire will not only serve as a guide for current administrators and developers but also protect future generations from the ghostly echoes of undocumented changes.
Without it, your Salesforce instance risks becoming a haunted mansion of forgotten customizations, leading to unexpected behaviors, difficult upgrades, and eventually, a system that frightens even the bravest of users. Remember, a well-documented Salesforce is a resilient Salesforce, one that can withstand the chilling winds of change and the terrifying specter of technical debt.
Stick to the Minimum Viable Product
Imagine the launch of a new Salesforce instance as a ritual, a delicate dance of code and configuration. For this ritual to be successful, only the most essential “incantations” – the absolute must-have features and functionalities – are required. These are the fundamental elements that will allow the system to breathe, to perform its primary purpose, and to begin delivering tangible benefits.
Consider these critical aspects when identifying your minimum viable potion:
- Core Business Processes: What are the absolutely indispensable workflows that the new system must support from day one? If sales reps can’t log opportunities or service agents can’t create cases, the system is dead on arrival.
- Essential Data Migration: What data is absolutely crucial for the system to function and for users to begin their work effectively? Resist the urge to migrate every historical record; focus on what’s necessary for immediate operational needs.
- Key User Roles and Permissions: Who needs access to what, and what are the minimum permissions required for them to perform their jobs? Avoid over-engineering complex permission sets in the initial phase.
- Compliance and Security: Any features related to regulatory compliance or fundamental data security are non-negotiable and must be included in the minimum viable potion.
The graveyard of failed projects is littered with the tombstones of “nice-to-have” features that were allowed to rise from their initial design documents and haunt the development process. These are the spectral additions that, while perhaps beneficial in an ideal world, are not essential for the initial launch.
By adhering to the “Minimum Viable Potion” philosophy, projects can achieve rapid deployment, gather real-world user feedback, and iterate in a controlled and strategic manner. It’s about empowering the essential, banishing the superfluous, and ensuring that your Salesforce implementation doesn’t become a terrifying tale of creeping scope and missed deadlines. Remember, a perfectly executed, lean launch is far more valuable than a perpetually delayed, feature-laden monster.
Release Often, Release Safely
Use DevOps tools and automated testing to ensure your releases don’t turn out to be Frankenstein deployments. To prevent your deployments from becoming “Frankenstein” releases, which are unpredictable, buggy, and difficult to manage, it’s crucial to adopt a robust and well-defined release strategy:
Smaller, More Frequent Releases
Instead of large, monolithic deployments that introduce a high degree of risk, break down changes into smaller, more manageable increments. This allows for faster feedback, easier identification and isolation of issues, and less disruption to end-users.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Implement CI/CD pipelines to automate the build, test, and deployment processes. This ensures that code changes are continuously integrated, thoroughly tested, and ready for release at any time.
DevOps Tools
Leverage a comprehensive suite of DevOps tools to streamline and secure your release pipeline. This includes:
- Version Control Systems (VCS): Use tools like Git to track all code changes, enable collaboration, and provide a clear history of development.
- Deployment Automation Tools: Automate the deployment process to eliminate manual errors and ensure consistency across environments.
- Environment Management: Tools that help manage and provision various environments (development, testing, staging, production) consistently.
Automated Testing
Implement a comprehensive suite of automated tests to validate the quality and functionality of your releases. This includes:
- Unit Tests: Verify individual components or methods of your code.
- Integration Tests: Ensure that different modules or services work correctly together.
- Functional Tests: Validate that the software meets specified requirements.
- Regression Tests: Confirm that new changes haven’t introduced defects into existing functionality.
- Performance Tests: Assess the system’s responsiveness and stability under various loads.
By embracing these principles and tools, you can ensure that your releases are not only frequent but also safe, predictable, and maintainable, ultimately leading to higher quality software and greater developer productivity.
Final Fright
Salesforce is powerful, but if it stays unmanaged, it’s in danger of becoming a haunted castle of complexity, which drives even the strongest wills to madness. The Creeping Scope feeds on vague requirements, weak governance, and the irresistible temptation of “just one more feature.”
So this Halloween, light the candles in your pumpkins, sharpen your project management and BA skills as well as your wooden stakes, and keep your project scope tightly under control. Because in Salesforce projects, the scariest monsters are not the ones in your backlog… they are the ones sneaking into production under the cover of darkness.
Have your Salesforce projects been infected by the Creeping Scope? How did you ward yourself against the horrors of requirements gone out of control? Tell us in the comments as a warning to others.
The Author
Nathaniel Sombu
Nathaniel is a freelance Salesforce Consultant, and has been building and looking after Salesforce systems since 2009. He has worked on Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Pardot for several companies, and is a regular speaker at Salesforce events, including London’s Calling, Czech Dreamin’ and Dreamforce.
This Pardot article written by:
Salesforce Ben | The Drip
Lucy Mazalon is the Head Editor & Operations Director at Salesforceben.com, Founder of THE DRIP and Salesforce Marketing Champion 2020.
Original Pardot Article: https://www.salesforceben.com/the-creeping-scope-in-salesforce-projects-a-cautionary-halloween-tale/
Find more great Pardot articles at www.salesforceben.com/the-drip/
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