 If you've ever built websites for clients, then you probably experienced the pain of scope creep. You know when a website should take about two to three weeks to complete, but ends up going like two, three months, possibly even a lot longer. You might even be caught in the grips of scope creep right now and just wondering when will this project end? Well, this actually is very common for the web design and web creators and there are ways to prevent it and also ways to get out of it when it does happen. What's up everyone, I'm Jeffrey at Lightbox and I love talking about web design and the business behind it. And one of the common topics that comes out in web design business is scope creep and how to deal with it. So that's what we're gonna talk about inside this video. Now scope creep, unfortunately, it is very common inside our industry, but it is manageable. And what I'm about to show you inside this video is a tool that I personally use, a way that I minimize and mitigate scope creep. And it's gonna be about defining the finished line of a project. So we're gonna go into two different parts inside this video. The first one, we're gonna look at how to prevent the scope creep before the project even happens. And then the second part of the video, I'm gonna show you how to use this tool of defining the finished line to go ahead and stop scope creep when it happens, bring the project back on track and have a good outcome for you and your clients. The number one cause of scope creep is a flaw in the project management process. Some of the main causes of scope creep are constant revisions. Clients, they have new ideas and they wanna make changes or add to the project after you've already started the project. The time that it takes to receive content and assets for the client, getting the content and images and the lack of communication. Sometimes clients, they just get busy or they disappear, you don't get that feedback in a timely manner. So knowing these are the most common pain points that we as web creators face, we could go ahead and create solutions for them. Minimizing scope creep starts from the very beginning. It starts from the beginning conversations we have with our clients from the very beginning where we do our proposals and most importantly, inside our contracts and agreements. The biggest purpose of a contract is setting clear expectations for you and the client. When this is done right, the project flows so much smoother. Here are a couple key areas to add inside your contract to help prevent scope creep. Number one, defining the deliverables. The deliverables, they're the scope of work or the SOW. These are gonna be exactly what you're going to do. By outlining these inside the agreement or the contract, you're listing down, I'm gonna do A, B and C. If it's a website, I'm gonna do X amount of pages. We're going to do these functions on there. So just getting every detail and having listed exactly what it is by adding that to the contract and by listing down the deliverables in there. You're allowing the client to also review that list. And I also suggest to bring it up to the client when you do send over the contract or agreement, ask him to review the deliverables. Make sure everything is there and if they're okay with it. The client then has a chance they can review it. They can say, hey, maybe we missed something. Maybe we could add something. But at the end of it, you guys have a set list of this is what we're going to deliver by the end of this project. But sometimes during the project, well, the client, they'll have some ideas. They have some changes in their own business. They might need to rearrange something. So what happens when a client then wants to add something new, a new deliverable that was not in the original agreement? The key here is have a process in place. Expect the client to wanna add something new to the project. By having something in place inside your agreement, that's gonna help the client know what is gonna happen. What is the process and procedure? For example, we have inside our contract that we have our deliverables, A, B, and C. If the client wants to add something new to the project, as long as it's under 10 hours, we could do that for an extra hourly pay and the pay is upfront whenever we do that. We have to accept the pay upfront. But if the requests are gonna be estimated over 10 hours, we're gonna be big requests, then we're gonna have to adjust the cost and the timeline, and we're gonna have to create a new project order. And I use words like project order and procedures and policies. We use these words and if you think about it, all businesses do. All businesses have policies. Create your own policy, whatever fits for you. That's just our policy. That's what works for us, for my design firm. But think about what's gonna work best for you. One thing I try to do is as well, when I have this policy in place, when I have this process and the client knows, okay, this is the procedure that they wanna add something new. It usually helps the client make the decision, is this worth putting the project on pause, taking it off track and renegotiating everything? Or is this something we could do after at a later time? Because odds are, most new requests can be done after the project is completed. And I'm always trying to guide our clients into completing the first agreement. So have that in place, policy, procedures, project orders. Defining the milestones. Every project should have milestones, whether it's big or small. The milestones are going to be short goals throughout the project, short finish lines. So you break it down. We could do phase one, phase two, phase three. And each one of these should have a payment added to it. For example, a milestone could be we complete the design. Once the design is completed, a milestone is completed. We collect a portion of the payment. By having a breakdown of the project in these milestones, we have a bunch of short finish lines and we have agreements to them. So like the first finish line, it could be finishing the design or it could be finishing the homepage. The second one could be finishing three other pages. You break it down as you see fit, but break it down into segments. Because when you do that, you have these short finish lines and these short goals through it and it keeps the project on course. Also, most importantly, is attach a payment to these finish lines, to these milestones. You wanna make sure you get paid throughout the whole entire process. I used to collect 50% upfront, 50% at the end of the project until I hired a business coach that told me to stop doing that. And when I did stop doing that, I saw that my projects and my clients were more on track, more invested and more focused. We saw a huge impact on the project management and the whole overall flow. Basically, it was a game changer. So break down the projects into milestones, get paid for each milestone and keep the project on track with them. Defining the timeline. Have a start and finish date. In all of our agreements, we say we're gonna start on this date and we're aiming to complete it on this day. We're already establishing a timeframe with the client. And something too that you might wanna mention with the client is you probably will have other projects scheduled. It really helps out to let the client know this that we have projects, we schedule them. We don't like to overflow them. We don't like them to overlap because then they start to interfere with each other. So we wanna make sure we have your project completed by this date. That way they know, okay, we need to provide content by this time, images by this time and it keeps everyone accountable. Most importantly though, when you start to go down this route and define the finish line, just make sure that you are always ahead as well. You don't wanna be the one to fall back. And using a project management tool. Being able to use a project management tool where you can get a complete overview of the project, where you get an overview of the timeline of the milestones, the deliverables. You have everything broken down. That helps you to keep your eyes focused on the finish line. And a lot of tools today also give free access to clients where clients can go ahead and also go in and take a look. Some tools are gonna be like Asana or gonna be like ClickUp. I personally like to use Notion but anything where you can get a full overview, get started even if you're brand new and your projects are very small. That's the perfect time to get started and invest in it because my experience using a project management tool is it takes quite a few projects to actually get the hang of it and to start to utilize it better. You're gonna keep optimizing it, finding what works just for you. So get started with that right away. It's a great investment and it's gonna really help you save time and get you away from that whole three, six, one year project that was supposed to take one week. And even with the best project management, curveballs can be thrown. Things happen during the projects and they do sometimes go off course. Even if you're seasoned like I am, they could still go off course. You have to expect it, have to be ready for it. Personally, I like to be flexible with my clients. I'm not super rigid. I understand clients have needs. I understand that their businesses are also evolving. I like to evolve with the client but I also like to keep timelines and things straight on the path. So what happens when the project does go off course? How do we get it back? That's why I like to use my tool, the finish line and I like to say finish line because I bring that up and I get the client back focused on the finish line. The first thing to do is when the project goes off course is to stop, pause, take a step back. Maybe take off a couple of days. It actually does help. Sometimes taking a step back helps to get more clarity on how to move forward. So once we got a clear mind and clear vision, we could reevaluate the project and redefine the finish line. Now the agreement, it had the finish line in there. We had it with the deliverables. We had it with the timeline and we even had it with the milestones broken down but it's off course now. So now we need to redefine the finish line and what I'm about to share right now, this could actually be used whether it just fell off course or if your project is right now a disaster and I've been there. I've been there where a project that was supposed to take less than a month took over a year. So I really know the pain of it but even no matter how far you're off course with it. This right here, this strategy that I'm gonna show can work either way. So you take a step back and you redefine the finish line. Put down a game plan. Okay, this is off course. What do we need to do to finish this project? List it down. List down a new goal. Then present that goal to the client and just simply let the client know. Hey, you know what? Our project went off course and I really wanna bring it back for the both of us. So what I wanted to do is have a new finish line that we could focus on so we could get your project completed right away. Here is what I'm proposing and then propose that list of what you feel will complete the project and then let the client come back to you and either agree on that or they might wanna add something to it. Most of the time, the client is gonna be totally cool with it. They're going to agree with it. In my experience, almost every single time, the client always says, yes, yeah, the project. It's gone off course. I think it's a good idea that we bring it back here. I think that's great. Or they might wanna say, can you please add this and this? Will that be okay? And I'll be totally fine with that right there. That's it. Once you have that set and do it by email so you have things written down. You want that one not to be on a phone call. You want that to be on an email. But there you go. You just redefine the finish line with the client. And now while you're going back through it and you guys are on that path, you got your focus. It's clear, it's straight. This is the direction we're going in. And when the client wants to try to take you off that track again, you just bring it back. Look, we got this finish line. Let's just go ahead and first complete this. Let's get to the finish line and we could go ahead and do that in the next phase. We could always create a new project order and add anything new to it. Keep, I use a word finish line with clients. It resonates. They understand. We all understand the finish line. And very, very, very seldom you're gonna get a client that's not gonna want to agree. All right, it's happened before. All right, at least I've had clients reluctant to agree. They wanna keep things open-ended. So when that happens, you just gotta simply say, look it, we need to have a finish line because I have to move on. That's it. And if they don't wanna move on, then you just stop. And if you have to stop and walk away from the project at that point, that's gonna save you more money and time. Because if you're holding on to the project to get that final paycheck, you're actually losing money if you're spending already months and months and months. And God, time goes by so fast. All right, so it's starting to rain outside right now. So you're gonna probably hear that in the background. And I guess that's my cue to wrap things up. I really hope this video helped. Skull Creek is something we all go through. But as time goes on, we start to develop these tools that I talked about. These practices and our processes and they just get better and better. But we just gotta focus on the project management side of things. And if we do that, we can manage the project to stay on track. And just keep this in mind. Skull Creek doesn't just affect us, but it affects our clients too. And if you're expecting your client to bring the project back on track, that is the biggest mistake you could possibly make because the client is relying on you to manage the project. Well, I hope this helped out. I'll be back again soon with more web design related content. And if you have any questions, please drop them in the comments. I get back to everyone. 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