What is Gold Plating in Project management? How to avoid this?

Gold Plating in Project Management means giving the customer extra or more than the actual requirement.

Gold Plating is unethical and not allowed as per the Project Management Code of Conduct.

It can be avoided at the time of preparing the detailed scope stamement or statement of work (SOW) by ensuring that unwanted material or work are not taken into account and then have a proper Scope Management Plan to review and change the SOW at any stage of the project if it is felt that gold plating has taken place knowingly or unknowingly.   

The concept of gold plating on projects usually refers to the process or concept of adding functionality beyond what is covered by the requirements - possibly even beyond what is practical or reasonable for the effort. Wikipedia defines it as: "Continuing to work on a project or task well past the point where the extra effort is worth the value it adds (if any). After having met the requirements, the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer would be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile."

In general, gold plating is considered a negative concept. It often leads to extra, undocumented work that is beyond the current scope of the project and can adversely affect both the budget and timeline for the project…since it is work being performed that is not estimated or planned for. The customer may or may not have asked for it - usually not - but there is no documented change order covering this effort so it's not within the scope of the project and should not be performed.

It is the action to give customer more than he needs and it may be occur without knowing the project manager

Gold plating happens when the project manager or a memeber of the project teams intentially adds more "features" to the final service or product.

Gold-Plating in Project Management is the act of giving the customer more than what he originally asked for. Gold plating is common in software projects, and is usually done by team members either on an individual or a collaborative basis, most of the times without the knowledge of the Project Manager.

Why Gold Plate?

Gold plating is giving the customer something that he did not ask for, something that wasn’t scoped, and often something that the he may not want. So why do it?

There are several reasons for gold plating:

Some team members thinking that a certain functionality would be “cool” to have in the end product, and so they add it.

Some team members falsely determining that a certain functionality is a pre-requisite to another one (but is absent in the scope), or a necessity in the end product. Note that in some cases, this might be true, but the process is wrong. Team members should follow formal procedures by reporting this to the Project Manager, who makes the ultimate decision (after consulting with key stakeholders, in the case of a big functionality).

Team members wanting to prove their abilities to the Project Manager and/or their direct managers.

Team members with a lot of slack trying fill in their time by adding “bells and whistles” to the end product.

The Project Manager wanting to shine in front of the customer (there might be a hidden agenda behind this, such as the Project Manager is seeking to be ultimately employed for the customer).

The Project Manager and/or the team members wanting to divert attention from (sometimes serious) defects in the final product.

By examining the above reasons, we notice that gold plating is mostly done with good intentions, but then again, even the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Note that the first4 reasons above imply that the Project Manager is not properly managing and controlling his resources.

Consequences of Gold Plating

There are many potential (mostly negative) consequences of gold plating, including:

Increasing the cost of the project. Gold plating takes precious time, and is usually done by top resources. Of course, the customer will not be paying for those extra hours.

Scope Inflation. Sometimes gold plating may result in changing some of the underlying infrastructure that was originally defined and agreed upon just to accommodate the features that the client did not ask for. Again, such changes are usually done by top resources.

Increasing risks. On average there are20 errors for every1000 lines of codes. Gold plating is mostly about adding code, and consequently, bugs.

Raising the expectations of the over-satisfied customer. Customers with a gold plated product will grow accustomed to getting more than what they originally bargained for, for free. The next time the same company delivers a project to this customer, there’d better be gold plating…

Customer backlash. As stated above, gold plating is giving the customer something that he may not want. Sometimes the customer will be ungrateful (as viewed from the team’s perspective) and will request to remove all the bells and the whistles that were added without his approval. This will cost the company time and money.

Who Benefits from Gold Plating?

On the short run, (almost) everybody. On the long run, nobody. On the short run (and ideally), team members will shine in front of their managers (while doing something they like), the Project Manager and the company will have a satisfied customer, and the customer will be getting more than what he paid for. On the long run, team members will be stressed to add extra (unpaid) features (no longer fun), the Project Manager will not be able to manage the customer’s expectations properly, the project will cost the company more time and money, and the customer will certainly be not as happy as the first time.

How to Avoid Gold Plating?

Avoiding gold plating is easier than what some might think, all the Project Manager has to do is to enforce a policy not to add any functionality (no matter how small or big it is) that is outside the original scope of the project without consulting with him first (and then formalizing the request). The Project Manager should be firm and he should punish gold-platers instead of rewarding them. Setting a harsh example with one of the team members might be a bit overkill, but will deter other team members from doing the same. Finally, the Project Manager should never give his team members complete autonomy, while not falling into the trap of micro-management.

Of course, if the Project Manager is the person who’s behind the gold plating, then all of the recommendations above are practically worthless. In this case, the stakeholders should interfere if this practice is jeopardizing the project.

In general, gold plating is considered a negative concept. It often leads to extra, undocumented work that is beyond the current scope of the project and can adversely affect both the budget and timeline for the project…since it is work being performed that is not estimated or planned for. The customer may or may not have asked for it - usually not - but there is no documented change order covering this effort so it's not within the scope of the project and should not be performed

Gold plating refers to the addition of any feature not considered in the original scope plan (PMBoK) or business case (Prince2) at any point of the project since it introduces a new source of risks to the original planning i.e. additional testing, documentation, costs, timelines, etc. However, gold plating does not prevent new features from being added to the project, they can be added at any time as long as they follow the official change procedure and the impact of the change in all the areas of the project is taken into consideration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering)

I totally agree with the elegant answer of Mr. Gourab Mitra and Mr. Ramy Zakher.

Gold Plating is all about "Stakholders requirements & expectations Vs Quality Delivery" ;

So, this phenomena happens when the requirements/expectations are not understood, disclaimed and / or documented with offical clear agreement(s), then in the delivery mode the customer asks more and when Project team says NO he replies with "poor quality, bad functionality, lack of expereince, get out of my room etc...";

Solution, (a)- Project specification/agreements/ESTIMATES with RISK buffers with details to the good extend, (b)- drive him to tables and points and mintues of meeting after Kick-Off, and (c)- Manage relationship in a proactive manner and professionally so he is not given space to do that GOLD Plating  

shukran ............

Khalid 

It is the tendency to give the customer more than what was agreed upon >>> The best way to avoid this is to focus strictly on what is agreed on contractually through clear and well-defined deliverables !

AGREED WITH BOTH ANSWERS GIVEN BY Mr.:RAFAAT & SURE Mr.:RAMY ZAKHER TOO