Scope creep

Scope creep is when a project quietly grows beyond what you set out to build, one "small addition" at a time, until a two-week feature becomes a two-month slog. Each extra request seems reasonable on its own, but together they blow the timeline, dilute focus, and delay the thing you actually needed to learn or ship. For a lean founder, scope creep is one of the most expensive habits, because your scarcest resource is time, and every unplanned extra steals it from validation and momentum. The defence is a clear, written scope up front, explicitly stating what is in and, just as importantly, what is out, so new ideas have somewhere to land instead of silently expanding the build. When a worthy idea appears mid-build, you note it for later rather than absorbing it now. Shipping the defined thing and learning from it beats polishing an ever-growing wishlist that never reaches customers.