Here's how you can manage scope creep while meeting project deadlines.

You have to understand and focus on what makes your game "unique" + You have to understand what will highlight that "unique": the additive factors and pieces that make the "unique" shine. Ask yourself & team: "What is our game's Unique Selling Point?" - especially if you're first coming from a product or from a business perspective. Ask yourself & team: "What (would we want) people to remember after playing our game?" Re-ask the question for different "time periods", esp. if you're coming from a "gameplay feel" point. Ask your first customer - depending on your business model: "What do I showcase you first? Are we sure it is the right thing to showcase first?" A combination of the answers to these questions will define your "Goals".

Have a no man. Seriously. One person whose job is just shutting down everything, letting things past when there's a clear argument, but pushing off anything otherwise. Collaborative brainstorming is great when you don't have a deadline. Having at least one person who's focused on swatting stuff down lets the team stay creative without letting go of pragmatism.

A priorização no desenvolvimento é extremamente importante, isso dá foco ao time e evitar ter distrações. Mas é necessário ter uma pessoa/time focada na resolução do problema e outra na implementação das mecanicas básicas, se não será um problema.

Your Goals then will break themselves down to "Tasks". However you scale them won't matter as a "User Story" from team/company/project A does NOT have to be the "same thing" with another team's "User Story": Define your scale, scale your stuff, stick with them, revise them if needed. Do the same exercise as "Defining Goals" with each scale of ToDo: -What does this Feature / Content need to shine? -What does it need to "Simply Work = be Functional"? Assign priorities to your Goals, stick with them for a while, but periodically revise them, and make conscious & informed decisions during the revisions. Never shy away from "delaying" a feature / content with a "Nice-to-Have" = "Let's talk about this again when all MUSTs are DONE".

It’s important to know when to say no. Know your worth and learn where your time should be spent to get the maximum amount of return for the project. If you don’t think a certain task is attainable in the current sprint, communicate that with your supervisor and see if maybe someone else can handle it, or get it pushed back to a later sprint so you can focus on your other tasks.

Assim como é importante a liderança ter idéia de como o projeto está no andamento periodicamente, a equipe de desenvolvimento também deve receber atualizações, principalmente com mudança de escopo. Além disso, uma discussão aberta sobre o tema pode ter pontos de vistas diferentes e muitas vezes evitar a empresa tomar atitudes que podem prejudicar ou aumentar a carga de trabalho sem necessidade.

Communication flows through many channels: Make sure you always have one source / person of "truth", especially in larger projects spanning multiple internal and external stakeholders. Both in the team and towards the publisher, communicate clearly, often, and precisely. When you communicate you're "cutting 4 characters", all parties receiving the comms should know exactly what you mean by "character": Are these AI NPCs (allies? quest givers?), enemies, set dressing / crowd characters? Communicate the "why, what and how" as a single voice in one go: Let everyone know what is impacting your scope how. It's better to write 3 good explanatory sentences than give bland "facts/outcomes" to not leave any interpretation and room for error.

You need to have identified your base available bandwidth as a measure of how many people can produce how much content/features in a given amount of time (days, weeks, sprints - whatever you decide to use as a timescale), and then having subtracted a reasonable "failrate" (such as vacation + average sick time, QA time to feature completion), you come to a possible bandwidth by department / team / groups of people who operate together. Sum of available bandwidth and fail-rate adjustment will give you a more realistic bandwidth. You also have a project management tool already set up with your project, so it's vital to track there as a single source of truth. You then keep revising the status & prio of the project's individual pieces often.

There is a 100% chance you’ll need to cut or scale back a feature. No game existing launches with all its planned content. When you decide on all your game features, make sure you prioritize them upfront. If you find they are all must haves, then chances are you need to rework the design of the game. Less is more in game development. There should only be a few core features tops, and maybe a couple more stretch goals. Anything outside of that, assume it will take a miracle to happen. Not saying don’t have lofty goals, but be prepared for everything to take longer than you’d expect by a very wide margin.

Flexibilizar é importante, mas também é importante não sair do escopo principal e ao invés de montar o projeto A que foi planejado, entregar um projeto B ao final do projeto. Seguir firme na ideia inicial é importante para que não surjam imprevistos acima do esperado, tanto de tempo quanto de recursos.

Aumento de escopo, dependendo dos recursos disponíveis para investimento são um terror para a falência do projeto. Além disso, riscos não previstos que podem aparecer são terríveis também, por isso é importante fazer uma boa análise e ter um escopo bem definido antes de iniciar o projeto.