Poor Project Scoping is Killing Your Productivity and Margins. Fix it now!
Ever take a trip to the grocery store without a shopping list? Chances are you end up buying more than you need and/or forgetting to buy stuff you really needed! You spend time wandering around the store and you often have to make another trip to pick up what you forgot the first time — spending more time and money than you needed to. Scoping work is kinda like creating a shopping list. When work is not scoped completely and clearly before we off-load a work assignment productivity, budgets, and efficiency are negatively impacted.
If you off-load too much work to a person or team, it can be overwhelming and cause stress, leading to mistakes or burnout. Work overload is the number two reason for employee burnout according to Gallup. Bad scoping exacerbates this problem. Whether you delegate the work in-house or go outside for help, one of the biggest challenges to getting good work done is scoping. Good scoping can be the difference between success and failure, and happy or frustrated employees.
What To Consider When Scoping Work
There are several potential obstacles that can make scoping difficult and a few things to consider:
- Defining project goals: It’s essential to have a clear understanding of what the project is supposed to achieve. If the goals are not well-defined, it can be challenging to determine the scope of work required to achieve them.
- Gathering requirements: It’s crucial to gather all the requirements for the project from stakeholders, including clients, users, and team members. If requirements are incomplete or inaccurate, it can lead to misunderstandings, delays, and scope creep.
- Balancing resources: The scope of work needs to be balanced with the available resources, including budget, time, and personnel. If the scope of work is too ambitious, it can strain resources and cause delays or quality issues.
- Prioritizing tasks: Once the scope of work is defined, it’s important to prioritize tasks to ensure that the most critical work is completed first. This requires a clear understanding of project goals, requirements, and dependencies.
- Communicating effectively: Effective communication is essential throughout the scoping process. All stakeholders need to be informed of changes, expectations, and requirements to avoid misunderstandings and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals.
Scoping Work Is A Two-Way Street
If you are used to being in control and making all the decisions, it can be difficult to let go and trust others to do the work. This can be especially challenging if the work is critical or high-stakes. Good scoping provides the foundation for building trust with the people/teams you are working with. Fear of losing control can be difficult, but when everything is mapped out, you can ensure the work will be completed effectively and efficiently.
The responsibility for good scoping is on both the person handing off the work and the person taking on the work. If you are handing off the work, the more detail you can provide, the better. If you are taking on the work, ask questions. If something isn’t clear before you start, or if you are unclear during the work, it’s important to ask questions to get clarity.
However, if all the questions come up real time during the work, you are likely to see scope creep. Scope creep refers to the gradual expansion of a project’s scope beyond its original goals. Managing scope creep requires careful monitoring, communication, and documentation to ensure that changes to the project are authorized and managed effectively. Scope creep is best avoided by having agreement on all the details before a project starts so nothing new is added during the work.
As an example, Work Simplr has been refining the scoping process for two years. Help with fast, complete, and clear scoping is one of Work Simplr’s superpowers. If there is a person on either end of the scoping process who knows the questions to ask, and has experience in what to avoid, you will be able to create a better scoping document.
Build Relationship Equity and Better Outcomes
It’s worth taking the time up front to think through exactly what you need. The more detail, the better. Don’t underestimate the importance of smaller items like formatting, in addition to the big items like deadlines. Some of the benefits to good scoping include:
- Saving time- spending time up front can save you more time in the long run.
- Accurate work- get the work done to your specifications- no guessing about the output.
- Building trust- the better the scoping, the more trust you can have that the work will be done to your specifications.
- Cost savings- having to re-do a project because the scope was inaccurate or changed can exponentially increase the costs.
- Reputation- everyone wants to do a good job. Poor statements of work often leave people/companies appearing unprofessional regardless of whether you are the employer or the freelancer.
Good scoping can help you build relationship equity- the currency that funds the quality of your interactions with employees, vendors and partners. Bad scoping can lead to the erosion of confidence and trust. Good scoping can be the difference between great work and having to repeat the work all over again.
Published by
Work Simplr- On-demand workforce powered by students 🔹 Future of Work Advisor/Speaker🔹Board Member
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At Work Simplr we’ve spent the last two years refining how to easily, effectively, and quickly scope work — hands down one of the biggest challenges in off-loading any type of work. You might say scoping work is one of our superpowers! It’s not easy but it can make the difference between success and failure. I wanted to share a few of my thoughts around scoping in the hopes it helps people, regardless of who they delegate the work to! hashtag#work hashtag#scopingwork hashtag#worksimplr
