Miscommunication; mutual frustrations; under-deliverability.

Those who have ever worked on the front lines of or coordinated a project have most likely experienced scope creep. While you might be unfamiliar with this particular project management term, you would be hard pressed to find a project that didn't significantly derail at one point or another. Sometimes that derailing can be swiftly dealt with, and sometimes it points out inefficiencies in the original scope.

Usually, however, scope creep is a dreaded, wasteful element of any sort of project.

But let's back up here a bit.

What exactly is scope creep? And why is it inevitable? How can project managers combat scope creep as well as reduce, if not completely prevent, it from becoming an overwhelming blocker?