You're facing scope creep in your startup project. How can you uphold agile principles amidst the chaos?

1. Set aggressive Goals on the Timeline! If the goal is aggressive, it naturally leads to the team trying to leave out whatever is not necessary initially and could easily be added in a second release a couple of days/weeks later. 2. Work with Sprints or weekly reviews to ensure there is no "scope creep". If they are faster, great, if not, don't increase the size of the project and be rigorous about it. 3. If necessary create an approval process for adding new tickets/requests to make sure it has to be justified.

To manage scope creep while upholding agile principles, start by reinforcing the importance of a well-defined product backlog. Regularly prioritize tasks, ensuring that only high-value features are added. Conduct frequent sprint reviews to assess progress and adjust as needed. Engage stakeholders in clear communication about the project’s goals and constraints. Encourage the team to stay focused on delivering incremental value, and be prepared to negotiate and push back on requests that threaten to derail the project.

Make "Getting Customer Feedback" the #1 priority. The more MVP you can do starting out and get to REAL customer feedback the better. You may or may not need that feature that's creeping in, but you won't know it until REAL customers tell you so.

Make sure that the Project is aligned with your Objectives and Key Results that you've set-up before the quarter. If not, don't even start it. If yes, it could still be that there is scope creep happening and there you need to be very effective on making everything possible a "nice to have feature" rather than a "need to have". The reason for this is simple: If you manage to get the project done a couple of weeks earlier, you will do a lot of learnings during that time which might obliterate half of your prioritised backlog altogether. That's the whole theory behind the lean startup methodology which to date is still the best way of going about it.

Clear communication is crucial in agile projects. When scope creep occurs, transparently inform all stakeholders about progress and potential changes. Reiterate project objectives and emphasize the importance of focusing on primary goals. Open dialogue manages expectations, fosters collaboration, and ensures everyone understands the need to limit non-essential changes.

Scope creep is one of the things that a startup cannot afford. Market feedback, customer suggestions, founder ideas, etc. keep on pouring in causing the project to crawl. Not all can be accepted nor all discarded. Agile methodology allows us to accommodate some of them, with short sprints, without disturbing the delivery schedule. Thus, it becomes very important to communicate with the tech team about the updated scope and with the leadership about the parked requests. This sets up right expectations for all involved, prioritizes the right tasks and keeps the project on schedule.