As the project manager, how to prevent project scope creep and/or gold plating?

Project Scope Creep/Gold Plating results in:

• Budgetary overruns,
• Extended time lines for completion of projects,
• Requirement of additional resources.

To prevent Scope creep/gold plating, as a project manager you must:

• Analyse the project requirement at initiation stage to see if all the factors/requirements have been taken into consideration and has been documented properly and communicated to all stakeholders.
• Ensure Change Request procedures have been defined and documented. This should include the scope changes request initiation, its  processing, approval chain and the procedures for dealing with financial as well as time factor aspects.