“That wasn’t in scope.”
Few phrases create more tension between teams, partners, and clients.
It usually lands like a deflection — or worse, an excuse. But in most cases, it’s a symptom of something deeper going wrong long before a project ever starts.
Scope issues rarely come from bad intent. They come from misalignment.
In website development especially, projects often start with deliverables instead of outcomes. Everyone agrees you’re “building a new site,” “migrating to a new CMS,” or “redesigning key templates.” But there’s far less agreement on what success actually looks like once the site is live.
For example:
- Is success a faster launch?
- Higher conversion rates?
- Easier content publishing for internal teams?
- Fewer post-launch bugs and hotfixes?
When those outcomes aren’t explicit, scope holds up right until reality introduces edge cases. A content model doesn’t support a new campaign. A CMS workflow breaks under real editorial use. SEO requirements surface late in the build. Suddenly the original scope feels inadequate — and everyone’s frustrated.
Another common cause is assumed ownership.
In website projects, teams routinely assume someone else owns:
- Content cleanup and migration
- Analytics and tag validation
- SEO redirects
- Third-party integrations
- Post-launch QA
Vendors assume internal teams will handle it. Internal teams assume the vendor is covering more than they actually are. When those assumptions collide, work appears that no one planned for — and suddenly it’s “out of scope.”
Process gaps make this worse.
Many projects move forward without clearly documenting:
- Who owns decisions end-to-end
- How scope changes are evaluated
- What happens when new information surfaces
Without a shared change process, scope becomes a moving target. Teams either over-deliver quietly until they burn out, or they draw a hard line when it’s already too late to adjust.
There’s also a leadership component that often gets overlooked.
When leaders push for speed without clarity, teams default to “we’ll figure it out later.” In website development, that usually means deferring hard decisions about content structure, governance, integrations, or performance requirements. It works — until it doesn’t. Eventually reality shows up, and the cost of ambiguity gets passed downstream.
The truth is, “that wasn’t in scope” usually means:
- The problem wasn’t fully understood upfront
- The constraints weren’t discussed honestly
- The operating model wasn’t aligned
So how do you prevent it?
Start by scoping decisions, not just tasks.
Instead of only asking “what pages are we building,” ask:
- What decisions will this site need to support?
- Who owns those decisions after launch?
- What happens when requirements change mid-build?
Next, normalize change — but define how it happens.
Scope shouldn’t be rigid, but it should be intentional. In well-run website projects, change is expected, priced, and governed. That protects both sides and keeps momentum when reality inevitably evolves.
Finally, reward clarity over optimism.
Projects don’t derail because teams plan too conservatively. They derail because risks stay unspoken until they’re unavoidable.
When scope is rooted in outcomes, ownership, and process, “that wasn’t in scope” stops being a breaking point — and starts becoming a useful signal that the work needs to evolve, not stall.