In 1998 I had the opportunity to write a book called, The Buzzword Bingo Book. As you might have guessed, it was all about buzzwords. I'm a huge fan (from the perspective of wanting to tear my own ears off and strangle upper management-types) of buzzwords. The book is old, but plenty of those buzzwords are still around, including my favorite: scope creep. Now there are plenty of more interesting buzzwords. Low hanging fruit for example, which is supposed to mean something about the easy sales/opportunities/revenue you can get in business. Who cares what it's supposed to mean, if someone says that in a boardroom meeting I immediately think about the low hanging fruit between my legs. Sorry for the visual, but it's true. And so does every other guy in the room. I'm particularly apologetic to any ladies in that boardroom, hopefully you're able to just think, "That manager is a moron. I'd like to kick him in the low hanging fruit." But scope creep still rules the day. Why, you ask? Mostly because it really means something, and back in 1998 I was dealing with scope creep constantly. In those days my company was building fairly complex web sites and applications (e-commerce, dynamic content sites, etc.) and we faced scope creep with every single client. It didn't matter if their website was 1 page or 5000 pages, scope creep reared its gruesome head. So when I heard the word scope creep, or when I used it (and yes, I'll admit to using this buzzword) it really said something to me, something along the lines of, "@#$@#$*#@$ client wants #@$#@$&@$@ more stuff on their @#$%@$##@#&% website." Those days are long gone, but even today I deal with scope creep on a fairly regular basis. Even with IGotNewsForYou we deal with it. When we first got IGotNewsForYou rolling we talked about a thousand different ideas, and we even started working on quite a few of them. We'd go down one road, thinking it would be fairly simple, only to add more ideas/more features/more complexity...tada! Scope creep. Of course, we want to offer the absolute best product(s) and service we can, but the reality is that there are always going to be limitations: time, money, lazy partners, plain old bad ideas, itchy toes that you have to scratch incessantly, etc. Often when starting a new business you don't really know entirely what your customers are going to want, but trying to offer everything is a mistake. As they say, you can't please everyone all the time. It just doesn't work. Keeping it simple is the key, in my mind, to being able to launch a business successfully, minimizing risk, keeping flexible and gaining traction. Start simple, offer limited functionality, services, products and see where it takes you. Build relationships with your customers and then grow from there. That's precisely what we're doing with IGotNewsForYou. We removed some of the products we were going to offer, in order to simplify things - both for our customers and ourselves. We simplified some of the requirements of how our system will personalize stories (thereby reducing the programming workload and also keeping the door open to move in different directions more quickly when we see the demand). We're making sure our website is ultra-basic in terms of design - it'll look nice, but simple, and it'll have the critical content but nothing else. This is partially to give users a very straightforward and easy experience, but it's also to avoid scope creep. Scope creep is the death of an entrepreneur. Even if you're working with a few partners (like I am), there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much people can do. We don't have all of the skills to handle everything but we certainly can't afford to hire other people. So you simplify, keep the requirements under control and avoid scope creep. Otherwise you get overwhelmed and you never launch. Never launching = death. Launching simple = a fighting chance. (Obviously there are no guarantees) Guy Kawasaki, a well-recognized name in the tech world, recently wrote a post on his blog titled, "The Art of Bootstrapping". My post isn't about bootstrapping per se, but there's a couple things he points out that say to me, "avoid scope creep". I encourage everyone to check it out, even if you're not in the software business, or currently starting your own business. In reality, scope creep is often inevitable. If you come up with some brilliant idea, you're not going to say to yourself, "Wait a second, that's more work than I had planned to do. Oh well." If it's going to make a significant difference to your business and its success, you have to look at doing the work. In fact, if you do a search for "scope creep" on Google the very first result (that I got at least) is a 2002 article by Hal Helms, titled, "In Defense of Scope Creep." I'd still contend, particularly for an entrepreneur working his or her tail off with limited time + resources that keeping scope creep significantly under control is critical. Launch quick, lean and mean. Add more later. To bring this enormously long post full circle: buzzwords are freaking lame. I'm no longer on top of the latest buzzwords, although I still encounter plenty of them. The phenomenon of buzzwords is here to stay (and the Buzzword Bingo game is still around too!) Just look at BuzzWhack for all your buzzword needs. And if you have any great buzzwords that you love-to-hate, email them to me, or post a comment. (Technorati Tags: buzzwords, scope creep, enterpreneurship)