This presentation explores some of the vexing problems in defining scope on complex projects, including the Richardson Effect, which found in measuring coastlines that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. As we try to bound project scope in more and more detail, could we be victims of the Richardson Effect, increasing the effort and schedule without limit?

The presentation will explore the possibility that there may be many different answers to a project scope boundary and how we can extract projects from the problems created by issues of scope definition.