About Scope of Work & Expectations

This post relates the origin story of my bidding strategy. Cross-dissolve to over 12 years ago....

I had been a project manager for a few years, and my strategy was 'To go with the flow'.

It kinda worked...

Until it blew in my face. 😱

A client from the gaming industry gave us a project with the largest animation budget ever.

$300,000 per minute.

"We trust you," they said.

We ran with it.

We'll figure it out as we go, right?

I was so wrong.

2 months into production, we hit a wall.

The client was not approving anything.

• Giving us extensive retakes.
• Our deadline was closing in.
• And we were never going to make it.

Every retake just added to my stress level. I wanted this project done and over with before I burned out.

During a review call, the client asked for a major change, one that would take weeks to fix, and they asked:

" I want it done by tomorrow."

"What? Tomorrow!?"

I lost it.

After I had calmed down, my boss came to me and said:

"You know what's your problem? You care only for the results and not the process."

I felt like a failure. I walked back to my desk to look at my schedule with disgust.

Of course, I care for the result; that's the whole point of what we do, and the goal is to deliver.

And then, it hit me.

I was wrong.

Because I only cared about the delivery, my schedule only had delivery dates.

I did not know how much stuff we had to do!

Since I *only* wanted things done, every new request added to my stress.

My go-with-the-flow strategy had failed.

I decided to do the inconceivable.

I stopped the production.

I invested time to make a *real* plan.

1️⃣ We created a clear scope of work.

2️⃣ Because our client was from the gaming industry and had no idea about our workflow, we designed a review flowchart to help them understand our process.

3️⃣ And I completed a detailed schedule.

I finally bid and completed my scope of work assessment halfway through the project.

I guess it's never too late to do the right thing.

And then I met with my client. I gathered my courage and admitted that I had messed up. I presented my plan to address any pressing issues and proposed a long list of solutions.

I was able to demonstrate that even though the budget was great, the scope of work was huge and needed more resources. So, I offered the client two choices, either to reduce the scope or to extend the budget.

They chose the latter.

*Big relief*

The rest of the production went smoothly. The scope of work and review workflow allowed us to share a similar language with our client. From working against each other, we started working together. Win-win!

And the client came back the next year with another project. $$$!

This lesson taught me we don't need more money, we need a scope of work aligned with our budget.

Period.

Get my free ballpark bid template here.