In pursuit of… Being Organised – 2
Following on from my first post on my pursuit of being organised, I remain determined, nay encouraged, to continue that impetus. Time to focus on the business side of things some….
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I am terrible at underestimating the amount of time a client project takes. Or perhaps I’m terrible at managing a project to keep within the scope (well, I see things that would work and the client sees things that might work, and…). The obvious answer is to factor in some “hassle” room – actually schedule for hiccups – and if they don’t occur, then refund the client for that time. I’m not convinced that this is quite the way to go, I’ve certainly not come across it before (well not the refund part, anyway). Or I could charge my time by the hour! I could have even more fun with my “Blogmistress” brand with that approach 
.
But one thing that is very clear is that even if a project should only take a certain amount of time, chances are it won’t, for some reason or another.
A fellow “Bird”, Sally Church, shared the following solution to keeping a project in order and it seems like an excellent approach, one that I have now adopted, to positive effect:
Whenever you have a signed and agreed contract (what do you mean, “what contract?”), write 3 slides on PowerPoint:
- Slide 1 – background – the strategic scope of the project
- Slide 2 – aims and objectives
- Slide 3 – what will be delivered and when
Send this to the client after the proposal is agreed and ensure agreement before you start.
Whenever there is a query – point out that it’s beyond the scope and a whole other project after the first one has been completed. Send the 3 page document again and ask if they would like to have a new proposal for stage 2. This works well and helps you to stay strong and firm in the face of any scope creep intentions!
So now when a client is eager to take advantage of the further potential for their business through the website we’re creating, which happens increasingly these days – there is just so much we can do now – we can agree with their excellent idea and say “Let’s get stage 1 up and running and then we can talk about the next part of the project in a new proposal”
Or the conversation could go “Well if you really need it now, we can do it but we haven’t budgeted for it so lets discuss a revised proposal to include your extra needs”, and change the proposal to address the new needs without scope creep.
Thanks to Sally for outlining this for me – it can work for any business, I’d think, and certainly applies well to mine. It may only be a matter of another hour or so’s work, but the knock-on effect of that on all other projects makes a big difference to keeping it all on track and in order.
Other aspects of organising myself include a schedule (I use the Google Calendar for all this – one calendar for home and business). This now includes for weekly admin and accounts, time for my own marketing, and all client projects have their time booked in for action – with some wiggle room, and keeping some time clear for the hiccups which invariably happen to all of us, and certainly for this single parent of primary-school-age children!
Outsourcing, building the team has also made a big difference – not only by sharing the workload but the first day my geeky chap started working with me I felt as though a weight had been lifted; this enabled me to look at everything from a perspective of “on” the business rather than from “in” it.
There are undoubtedly many other tools, ideas and methods that can be helpful, and I’d love to hear about what find helps to keep your business on track, in all ways?
