🚩Tactical Memo 109: The Scope Changed and Nobody Said So
It arrives as one small favor after the meeting ends. The date never moves.
Justin Bateh
October 29, 2026
Tactical Memo #109 | Navigating Modern Work · Management | 5 min read
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In brief The situation: Work gets added to your project in conversation, never in a change request. The mistake: Most people absorb the ask and leave the date where it was. The move: Price every ask out loud and make someone choose what comes out. |
The story
The meeting ends and somebody stays behind to ask for something small.
"While you're in there, can you pick up the vendor piece too?"
And it is small.
You say yes. Nobody writes it down, and the date stays where it was.
6 weeks later the project is late, and that conversation exists nowhere except in your memory.
The project was never approved to get bigger. It got bigger anyway, 1 favor at a time, and every favor was reasonable.
If you have ever said sure to something that was not in the plan, you were standing in that hallway.
Nobody announces a scope change. They ask for 1 small thing and leave the date alone. Here's how to work with it.
The moves
1/ Answer the ask with a yes and a price
You never have to refuse anything.
Say yes, and say what it costs in the same sentence.
A refusal makes you the obstacle. A price makes the person asking the decision maker.
Say this "Happy to take that on. It adds about a week to the date, or we pull the reporting work out of this phase. Which one do you want?" |
2/ Route every ask through 1 door
New work shows up after the call ends and in message threads nobody else reads.
Tell the team there is 1 place a change gets requested, and send everything that arrives anywhere else back to it. NEVER absorb it where it landed.
An ask you can count is an ask you can defend.
3/ Write it down before you leave the room
Within the hour, put the ask in the thread your sponsor reads, in the words the person used.
Not a case against anyone.
You are making the growth visible while it is still 1 line long.
Scope that lives only in your head is scope you will carry alone.
4/ Make the sponsor choose what comes out
If something goes in, something comes out or the date moves.
You name the 2 options. They pick 1.
The moment a sponsor picks, the change stops being yours and starts being theirs.
Say this "I can fit it in. That means the launch moves to the 14th, or the migration drops out of this phase. Your call." |
5/ Keep an added-since list
1 running list of everything added since the plan was approved.
It takes 30 seconds an entry and it is the most useful document on the project.
At the end, the only version of events that survives is the one somebody wrote down.
Checklist What was asked for, in the asker's own words. Who asked, and what day. What it added to the date, or what came out instead. |
6/ Send the decision back to whoever made it
When a sponsor picks, put their own decision in writing the same day.
The choice and the new date. Nothing else.
It goes to the person who made the call, with the team copied.
People forget what they agreed to. They do not forget what they read with their own name on it.
7/ Put a scope line in every status update
Every update carries 1 line of scope math, in the same spot, every week.
Then nobody has to ask how much the project grew. They watch it grow.
A number in week 3 is information. The same number in week 12 sounds like an excuse.
Do this "Scope since approval. 14 items added, 2 removed, 11 days added to the date." |
8/ Keep the first plan intact
When you re-plan, do NOT overwrite the version that was approved.
Save it, date it, and keep it where the team can see it next to the current one.
Without the first plan, a project that doubled looks like a team that was always slow.
9/ Re-baseline at a threshold you set in advance
Pick the line before you need it. 10 days added, 10% more work, whatever you can defend.
When it gets crossed you stop absorbing and say OUT LOUD that this is a different project than the one that was approved.
Nobody gets punished for re-baselining in month 2. They get punished for doing it in month 9.
Say this "This is no longer the project we approved in June. I want 15 minutes to re-baseline it before we go any further." |
The outcome
| Most people | You |
|---|---|
| Say yes in the hallway and move on | Say yes and name the cost in the same sentence |
| Carry the new ask in their head | Put it in writing inside the hour |
| Absorb the extra work and hold the old date | Make the sponsor pick the date or the cut |
| Report progress and leave scope out of it | Put 1 line of scope math in every update |
| Explain the growth after the project is late | Re-baseline out loud at the line you set |
Proof. PMI's 2018 Pulse of the Profession found that 52% of projects finished in the prior year had taken on scope creep or uncontrolled changes to scope, up from 43% 5 years earlier. PMI, 2018
This week
The project did not go wrong at the deadline. It changed shape in a dozen short conversations.
Not 1 of them felt like a change.
The people who have learned this rule are not harder to work with. They are the ones who make the cost of a request visible at the moment it is made, while it is still cheap to say no to.
Try it next time someone adds something small. Say yes, say the price, and let them pick.
Every hour you absorb quietly becomes an hour you cannot explain later.
Reply
What is the smallest ask that ever cost you a month? Reply with the ask. I read every one.
Until next time.
Justin Bateh, PhD
CEO @ AI Operators Lab
Founder & Editor, Tactical Memo