An Agency Owner’s Guide To Managing And Avoiding Scope Creep

What is scope creep? 

Project scope defines the work required within a project.

Scope creep defines unplanned, extra work after the project has begun, that exceeds the initial scope.

Scope creep is every project manager’s, web designer’s, and web developer’s worst nightmare. It usually results in exceeded budgets, extreme delays, and in the worst-case scenarios, project failure. It is an essential skill for every digital agency to learn to manage scope creep.

Fortunately, there are concrete techniques, proven by successful agencies, that you can implement into your processes to limit the risk of scope creep in your next project.

What’s causing scope creep in your business, and what can you do to avoid it? 

Scope creep becomes a real problem when project managers, teams, and stakeholders don’t understand that changes affect schedule, budget, and resources.

Unfortunately, most of the time, unchecked changes fall onto the shoulders of team members. This can not only deeply impact those individuals when they’re overwhelmed with stress, but can also cause havoc on the internal workings of your business, and cause it to crumble from the inside.

When your team members are burned out with unrealistic deadlines, overworked, and unhappy it will almost always hurt your bottom line, and prevent your business from performing the way it should be.

We’ve compiled a list of 3 reasons you may be experiencing scope creep:

Your initial project brief lacks clarity and depth.

This is, and we can’t emphasize this enough, the most important point. If you do not have a project brief, or it is too vague, then scope creep is almost inevitable. Putting the extra effort into this document early on can save you and your team from suffering down the line.

Your project brief should be signed off by the project manager, the client, and the team members to be 100% sure all parties have equal expectations for how the project will turn out.

What should you be putting in a project brief? A website brief, for example, should include information on the business, brand, and customers of your client. It should cover measurable project deliverables. It should go over design elements, clearly state the timeline and budget, describe the target user, and much more. Get this right the first time around, and you’ll have a much more successful project overall.

If you want to know more about how to write a detailed brief or download our free brief template, we have an in-depth article on our blog.

Unchecked communication between team members and clients.

This is an important factor. During the course of a project, team members should concentrate only on the deliverables of the project. There should always be a project manager to facilitate communication between clients and team members, and any change requests funneled through the correct channels.

If this aspect isn’t managed, clients will tend to ask developers/ designers or graphic artists to make ‘small’ changes. These changes, though seemingly insignificant may add up over time, and without being properly funneled through your process (factored into the timeline, and listed in an official document) they can cause major delays and scope creep.

Additionally, your team’s job is to deliver a product, not manage difficult client expectations. Putting team members into this position may cause burnout, and affect the efficiency of your agency.

Place a trained project manager between your team and your client at all times.

Non-existent change processes. 

This goes hand in hand with a successful brief. Your agency should have an effective change process implemented. A change process will describe how a certain change is classified within a project.

When a client comes with a significant change to a project before completion, you should know how to handle it. Will timelines need to be adjusted? Does the initial budget cover the change? All this should go through a process before it is added to your project scope.

You can come up with a change process that works for you. Most of the time it will include a change request document that includes the scope, and the additional time/ budgetary requirements.

Just make sure every single change is documented and accounted for. That way you can keep clients, and team members accountable for the project.

Some other factors that could be causing scope creep in your agency:

• Customers trying to get extra work done cheaply. Passing off major tasks as ‘small changes’.
• Project managers over-promising timelines or results to clients in order to get the sale.
• Unachievable deadlines (often set by management, not the knowledgable team members).
• Beginning work before resources are gathered or the full scope is established.

Remember that every agency experiences scope creep

Every single agency in the business, no matter how successful, has experienced scope creep at some point. A lot of the time it can simply come down to difficult clients, unexpected technological problems, or other factors you couldn’t possibly anticipate or control.

Change is inevitable, and it’s rare that a project brief stays the same all the way through. The key here is implementing effective processes that keep your clients, team members, and managers accountable. Documenting a project from start to finish will help you grow and streamline and improve, and result in more successful websites, better reviews, and less scope creep all around.

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