There is a particular kind of sentence that appears late in a project.

“While you’re in there…”

It is usually followed by something small.

A button might be moved. A report could include one more field. Perhaps the notification could also go to another person, except on Fridays. None of these requests is unreasonable.

This is what makes them dangerous.

The first is done quickly. Then another appears.

After a while, the client has learned something perfectly rational: requests produce results.

They ask. Things happen.

I have occasionally realized, rather late, that I have ceased to resemble a person working on a defined project and become part of the building’s plumbing.

There was once a bottle of water on the table. It contained a certain amount. We agreed what it was for.

Somewhere along the way, someone fitted a tap to it.

The distinction is important.

A bottle may be poured generously. A tap suggests that water is simply a property of the wall.

One does not normally thank the wall. Nor does one pause before filling another glass.

This arrangement can continue quite pleasantly for some time. The requests remain small. I remain helpful. The project improves.

Then the invoice arrives.

This is where the haunting begins.

Everyone remembers the original project. Nobody quite remembers inviting the additional hours into the house.

They seem to have appeared on their own.

Scope creep is often described as a problem of demanding clients. I think this is unfair.

If every small request has quietly produced work, I have taught the client how the relationship functions. It is difficult to resent someone for using the tap after I installed it and neglected to mention the meter.

So I have become more careful about boundaries.

Not because every additional request should be refused. Quite the opposite. Some of the best parts of a project are discovered after the original scope was written.

But when something new enters, I prefer to acknowledge its arrival.

We can add it.

We can exchange it for something else.

We can save it for later.

We can decide that it is small enough to absorb.

What we should not do is pretend that it has no size.

Unbounded work has a peculiar supernatural quality. It accumulates without ever having officially existed.

By October, this seems seasonally appropriate.

I still like being helpful.

I simply prefer the water to come from somewhere.