Look Before You Leap: 2¢ on Scoping Projects
This might sound really obvious, and it is: don’t say yes to something without understanding what you’re saying yes to. Obvious, right? Kindergarten level awareness. Don’t take candy from strangers, don’t run off in a crowded subway station, basic little kid rules.
That being said, now that we’re no longer five years of age and we work for a living, there are times when an opportunity pops up that looks exciting, challenging, or well-paying — and we jump at it. We’ve done it. You’ve probably done it.
We should all stop doing it. It never seems to end well. Here are a few examples of issues that have come up when we’ve dived headlong into waters without knowing their depths:
Project scope balloons when we think we’re naming X number of products and now we’re naming twice as many. Yes, we can and have re-scoped, however that can cause undue stress and is easily avoided.
Timelines warp when we don’t have all the information we need from the start and then find ourselves scrambling to find the right people to talk to while still (maybe, hopefully) trying to maintain original timelines.
Decisions get murky when the client asks (or doesn’t) to include more people. This gets exponentially more difficult when we don’t have a dedicated point person, another part of our process we’ve honed in the past few years.
Again, really simple stuff, particularly in hindsight. We made these mistakes so maybe you don’t have to.
We now think about project scoping a little differently. Any time we aren’t 100% sure we know what the deliverables are, how long they’ll take, and who the team is, we scope only for a discovery phase — where, unsurprisingly, we learn all of those things.
A discovery-first process is a low-cost and low-friction way for everyone to get what they need to say yes to a fully informed and scoped project. We all sign NDAs and then can learn anything and everything. We get to know the team and they, us. We ask questions about dates and launch timelines and often learn which dates are malleable and which are set in stone. Everyone agrees to work they feel good about, knowing we can always add on — or, say no — and say no for the right reasons. Maybe we’re actually not needed, or too expensive, or not the right fit. At least we all know that before we’re barrelling through space and time trying to make something work.
If you’re living in a stress-fest and saying yes a lot, consider saying yes to learning more only — not everything under the sun. It’s worked wonders for us.
