Managing Small Projects - Eliminating Scope Creep
It's a common occurrence. Regardless of the type of work you do or the kind of project you're currently working on, sometimes you'll wind up doing more than you agreed to do. The problem is scope creep -- you'll see it when a customer asks you for a minor change and, because you want to provide good service, you agree. It can cost you time and money.
It's a problem that happens often to people who are just starting out in a service business that involves decorating or house painting, wallpaper hanging, landscaping, yard maintenance, web publishing, graphic arts, or a similar, project-oriented, one or two person business. It can even happen to larger businesses that haven't implemented the right kind of project management procedures. It's primarily a problem with jobs that have a fixed or a not-to-exceed price.
Why be concerned about it? Because, not only can it drain your time and money, it can make the lives of both you and your customer miserable with frustration, anger and stress. If allowed to go too far, it can involve unpleasant lawsuits and other time-consuming and costly consequences.
Here's how it becomes troublesome. Your good nature and desire for customer satisfaction causes you to give in on the first request or two. Later on after you've already said yes to a couple of requests, the customer will ask for something else and you agree because you've already set a precedent. After a while you realize that you've given away twenty or thirty hours of additional work and what's worse, you now have to rework some of the things you've already completed. Your customer will tend to view each of these requests as reasonable, will not see the big picture, and will not feel like they have caused a problem.
You'll finally get to a point where you have to say no to anything new and you'll need to ask the customer to pay for the changes. You will feel bad, your customer will feel cheated, and both of you will have a bad experience.
How can you avoid this misery? You need to guard yourself against this problem and, surprisingly, it isn't that difficult. You just need to incorporate three things in your procedures.
First, draw up a standard contract, one that you will use all the time, that has a place to spell out in detail everything that you're going to do and exactly what it will cost. You should be able to spell out the cost in detail if you've done a good job of planning the work. Review the detail of the job with your customer and get a signature on the contract.
Second, make sure you have in the contract, a description of how additional work or services will be priced. Include a written explanation of how changes and revisions will be handled and a disclaimer stating that they may have an adverse impact on the schedule.
Third, memorize a verbal response to change requests and practice it until it comes out automatically any time a customer asks for changes in schedule, or additional services. Start with verbiage like, "Yes, we should be able to do that. I'll work up a cost and see if it will affect the schedule and get back to you." Once you've calculated the impact, add it to the contract and get the customer's signature on the revision.
Remember, if you want to keep scope creep in check, make sure you have a signed contract and get signatures on any revisions. You can always give a little on the rules you have in place if you need to. But if you haven't put any rules in place, you've made it easier for your customer to take advantage your good nature, and your only defense is the power of your own will.