The hand-written note, scrawled in the best penmanship of my nine-year-old daughter, lay next to the plate of sugar cookies and the warm glass of milk.  It was eleven PM.  Three kids lay in their sleeping bags, asleep on the floor of the play room—cameras ready to capture images of the annual intruder.

Illuminated by the glimmering lights from the tree, I scanned her note.  Two pages.  Itemized.  Fifty-three lines, fifty-three items.  Requests.  The letter begins, “Dear Santa.  I wrote this list today.  I know you already got my letter.  These are other things you could give me.  Please leave them under the tree with the rest of my presents.”

There are a number of ways to view her letter.  It certainly is cute—it’s probably cuter if you’re not her parents.  You know what occurred to me at 11 PM as I stood there in my slippers eating the cookies and drinking the warm milk to reinforce the message to my children that Santa exists?  Two words.  Scope Change.  Plain and simple.

Weeks of thoughtful planning, buying, and wrapping possibly shattered by the scratchings of a number 2 pencil.

Make no mistake; this will happen to you on your EHR project.  Scope change.  Where will it come from?  Users, vendors, the CFO, reform.  Most projects fear change.  Change is feared because the project team never quite got their arms around the original scope.  Most change means more dollars and more time.

Scope change can be healthy.  Why?  I bet most EHR projects are under-scoped.  Did you read that correctly?  Yes.  I bet if an independent party assessed your scope document and work-plan you will find you are under scope in these three areas:

• Change management
• Work flow improvement
• Training

If that’s the case, you will have spent tens of millions of dollars building something slightly more functional than a rather intricate Xerox machine.