Gold plating. It seems harmless enough—who wouldn’t want to go the extra mile to add more features and enhancements? But in project management, this tendency to over-deliver can be a recipe for disaster.

Extra bells and whistles may impress stakeholders initially, but gold plating can blow budgets, delay schedules, divert focus, and even anger clients who didn’t ask for the extras. As tempting as it is to showcase your expertise as a project manager, gold plating must be avoided.

What Is Gold Plating in Project Management?

Gold plating refers to the practice of adding extra features or deliverables that were not specified in the initial project scope. These unnecessary “bells and whistles” go above and beyond the agreed-upon requirements.

For example, if the client requested a basic website with five pages, gold plating would involve delivering seven pages with extra animations and interactive elements that the client didn’t request.

Some instances of gold plating include:

Adding premium materials or supplies that exceed the stated requirements
Developing elaborate graphics, media, or interfaces beyond scope
Engineering products to a higher specification than needed
Implementing unnecessary integrations or connections
Including excessive reports, tracking, or analytics capabilities
Building extensive content like guides or videos that weren’t requested

At first glance, gold plating can seem like you’re just exceeding expectations and delivering exceptional value. But unfortunately, it can seriously derail projects.

Why Is Gold Plating an Issue in Project Management?

If gold plating is providing more value, why is it considered a project risk? Consider the following repercussions:

Increased Costs

Those unnecessary features require extra development time, materials, testing, and other resources. Gold plating can blow out the budget if additional costs are not tracked and managed.

Unexpected expenses also erode trust and credibility with stakeholders. Even if you don’t charge extra, gold plating represents an inefficient use of resources that could have been allocated elsewhere.

Extended Timelines

Incorporating excessive features extends timelines as resources shift to unplanned work. These delays are exacerbated if scope creep isn’t controlled from the beginning.

Missed deadlines due to gold plating reflect poorly on the project manager. Stakeholders become frustrated if overruns are not communicated transparently.

Misalignment with Expectations

Clients and stakeholders agree to a project scope based on their needs. Gold plating delivers more than they asked for, misaligning with expectations.

They may not view these additions as added value, but instead as “scope creep” that distracts from their goals. The extras can even overwhelm stakeholders and derail user adoption.

Increased Complexity

Each unnecessary feature makes the project more complex. The result may be impressive but difficult to use and manage. Complex systems introduce more opportunities for issues.

Excess complexity not only inflates development efforts, but also maintenance, training, troubleshooting, and other post-implementation costs.

Lack of Focus

Gold plating directs energy from high-value core features. Trying to over-deliver can take focus away from executing the fundamentals well.

The core objectives that stakeholders care about may receive inadequate attention. This leads to dissatisfaction and projects that miss the mark.

Lower User Satisfaction

While managers and stakeholders may be initially wowed by gold plating, excessive features and “chrome” ultimately hurt end user satisfaction.

The product becomes cluttered, confusing, and frustrating to use. User adoption suffers if the extras get in the way of core functionality.

Real-World Examples of Gold Plating Gone Wrong

Let’s look at some real project management horror stories where excessive gold plating led to budget blowouts, missed deadlines, and angry stakeholders:

Healthcare.gov

This government website, launched in 2013 to support the Affordable Care Act, is a notorious example of gold plating gone wrong.

The site contained many complex, unnecessary features that led to its crashing soon after launch. Efforts to scale back the site cost over $1 billion dollars—double the original budget. The debacle damaged credibility and led to missed enrollment targets.

BBC Digital Media Initiative

The BBC poured £98 million into this digital archiving system between 2008 and 2013 before scrapping the project entirely.

The project timeline ballooned as teams gold plated the system with cutting-edge but superfluous features. Poor scope control led to tremendous waste for the broadcaster.

Sydney Opera House

The iconic Sydney Opera House, delivered in 1973, went over budget by 1,400% due to gold plating and lack of cost oversight.

The elaborate, non-essential design elements blew out costs from $7 million to over $100 million. The significant overrun eroded public goodwill.

Denver International Airport

When this airport opened in 1995, it was $2 billion over budget and 16 months behind schedule after excessive gold plating.

The complex automated baggage system was unusable, the fancy design elements were unnecessary, and the delays were a major embarrassment.

Clearly, gold plating can transform capable project managers into ineffective leaders and turn innovative ideas into costly failures.

6 Strategies for Preventing Gold Plating

Avoid the pitfalls of excessive gold plating in your projects by adhering to these strategies:

1. Define a Clear, Realistic Scope

Leave no room for interpretation by documenting project objectives, deliverables, timelines, costs, quality metrics, and testing protocols.

Outline assumptions and constraints. Review the scope with stakeholders to ensure alignment and prevent diverging assumptions over project direction.

2. Follow a Formal Change Process

Institute a change management process for addressing new feature requests or scope changes. Require stakeholders to submit a formal change request for assessment and approval.

Evaluate the impact on schedule, resources, costs, and other factors before accepting changes. Push back on out-of-scope requests that don’t align with business goals.

3. Avoid Perfectionism

Don’t get seduced by the temptation to add every possible feature, enhancement, or the latest innovations. Stick to the minimum viable product that meets agreed requirements.

Keep stakeholders focused on achieving key business outcomes rather than impressing people with extras. Perfect is the enemy of done.

4. Institute Oversight Controls

Implement strong governance to detect gold plating before it goes too far. Require reviews at stage gates to ensure alignment with scope and user needs.

Empower a steering committee to review and approve/deny proposed additions. Require a cost-benefit analysis to justify any changes.

5. Foster Open Communication

Be transparent with stakeholders about the consequences of uncontrolled additions. Educate them on how scope creep can derail schedules, budgets, and outcomes.

Set clear expectations upfront on your change control process. Communicate early about any emerging risks related to gold plating.

6. Watch for Warning Signs

Be proactive about identifying patterns indicative of creeping gold plating, like unclear requirements, lack of governance, “nice-to-have” feature requests, or overbuilding.

Revisit the scope if ambiguous elements emerge. Reel in stakeholders trying to increase the scale or complexity unnecessarily.

Warning Signs Your Project Is Becoming Gold Plated

Keep an eye out for these common indicators that gold plating may be putting your project at risk:

Stakeholders make vague, expansive feature requests like “make it cutting-edge” or “showcase innovation”
People insist on adding capabilities because “it would be nice to have”
Teams overengineer aspects without a specific business need
You observe excessive perfectionism or overpreparation
There is inadequate tracking of feature requests and change orders
No one is empowered to deny or defer proposed additions
Trade-offs are avoided because of fear of sacrificing competitive advantage
Scope increases incrementally without reassessing timelines or resources
Stakeholders demand additions at the last minute before launch

Key Takeaways on Mitigating Gold Plating Risks

Gold plating is an avoidable threat to project success. By focusing on these key steps, you can proactively guard against uncontrolled scope increases:

Define a realistic scope aligned to business needs
Manage changes through a formal, controlled process
Empower oversight stakeholders to challenge additions
Foster transparency and provide guidance on trade-offs
Limit perfectionism and overengineering
Watch for warning signs like vague requirements
Stick to the minimum viable product that meets needs
Keep stakeholders focused on achieving core goals

While it’s tempting to go above and beyond, disciplined project managers recognize when enough is enough. Avoid the pitfalls of excessive gold plating by setting clear boundaries, managing scope creep, and delivering projects that steadily advance strategic goals without the unnecessary bells and whistles.

References

Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (6th ed.). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (12th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Schwalbe, K. (2020). Information technology project management (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Shah, S. (2020). The root causes of scope creep and gold plating. Project Management Institute. https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/root-causes-scope-creep-gold-plating-12786
Rad, P.F. (2002). Is your project team plagued by “scope creep?”. AACE International Transactions, PM21.