What to Do
Write the question as a question. Define the boundary: what is in scope, what is out, what decision the answer serves. State in advance what evidence would settle it, and what you will do if that evidence never arrives.
How It Fails
The investigation that never ends because nobody wrote down what finishing looks like. Scope creep is not thoroughness; it is the absence of a question.
Check
- The question is one sentence and is falsifiable
- The decision the finding serves is named
- The evidence that would answer it is listed before collection starts
- A stop condition exists