Over-promise and under-deliver – scope creep

Can you relate to this:
The Business development manager, the partners or ‘sales’ guys have stretched the project deliverables ‘a bit’ to get the sale and cut out the competition.. no big deal, the guys just have to put in a few more night shifts to complete the ‘few bits we promised the client’ to make him happy and go with us.
so this is the over-promise and ‘set up for under-delivery’. Nothing new and unlikely to change fundamentally as long as the guys you sell don’t have to deliver themselves.

Or have you found an alternative ?

What makes it more difficult is the scope creep. I recently trained several middle-level management consultants of a big international player and there were split opinions regarding how to best manage the scope creep…. from ‘there is nothing we can do anyway, the client expects it and our hands are tight and the partner is not going to be happy with us being difficult’.

I believe that doing a proper diagnostics and defining what is in and out of scope, even once the project has been given the go ahead, is vital and part of excellent communication and delivery/change management.

I use tools like:
- Black box
- IS – IS NOT
- Stakeholder analysis
- Stakeholder maps
- Expectation management
etc.

What tools do you use and how do you handle this problem ?

Best regards