What to ask your agency about project scoping

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on project scoping, these questions are worth asking early.

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Vague scope is the root of most budget disputes. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Assumptions should be recorded, not held in someone's head. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

How to tell if yours is fine

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about project scoping before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Assumptions should be recorded, not held in someone's head — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.