It’s every project manager’s worst nightmare. You start your video production project with a clear timeline and budget, and then stakeholders start chiming in. The reviews pile up and the asks get bigger and bigger. Before you know it, you’re out of budget with no hope of meeting your project deadline. And it all could have been avoided with a proactive approach to scope management.
What is Scope Management and Scope Creep?
Scope management is the process of understanding and controlling what goes into your project so it can meet the goals set for it. It is the only effective defense against the blight of scope creep — when new ideas and demands cause a project to swell into something much bigger, and less successful, than planned. That can lead to budget overruns, late delivery, or a final product that just doesn’t meet the need.
Fortunately, avoiding scope creep doesn’t have to be difficult. Scope management can, and should, be built into your production process. The following steps offer general guidelines for project managers to avoid scope creep. We also share advice for how to collaborate with vendor-side project managers if you are the contact person within your organization.
Step 1: Set a Goal
If you don’t know what target you’re trying to hit, you won’t know if you succeeded. Setting a clear goal is the first step to successful scope management. It’s not enough to say you want to make an explainer video. Consider:
- Your ideal audience
- The message you want to convey
- Where you will distribute the final product
- What you want viewers to know or do
Incorporating all of this into your goal will help you weigh whether a particular idea or element should be included.
Step 2: Map a Detailed Production Timeline
Next, decide when you would like to be able to publish your final product. Work backward from that date to determine when each round of reviews or feedback needs to be submitted. This will help you avoid last-minute changes that push the project out of scope.
Some typical project milestones include:
- Script first draft complete
- Script edits submitted
- Script finalized
- Storyboards drafted
- Storyboard feedback submitted
- Storyboard complete
- Actors, voiceover artists, and/or music selected
- Rough edit complete
- Final feedback submitted
- Video finalized
You could have more or fewer milestones depending on the project, but aiming for detail will help you notice issues early. If your video needs to be reviewed by legal or some other review body, build that into your production plan, too.
Step 3: Assemble Your Team
Bring together a group of stakeholders who will be responsible for the project. Smaller working groups tend to be better at staying in scope, but make sure you’re including everyone who will need to give feedback. It’s much easier to start with a large group and pare down than it is to bring in someone who may have a different perspective part way through the project.
Deputize one person in your work group to be the point of contact with the production team. This streamlines communication and helps avoid confusion.
Pro tip: Invite executives to contribute early in the process. The last thing you want is to send a completed video to your CEO and have them respond with pages of feedback.
Step 4: Establish a Review Process
Before you start drafting a script, consider how you will collect and organize feedback. Last-minute reviews, conflicting feedback and missed messages can all contribute to scope creep. For most projects an email chain just won’t be robust enough.
We recommend investing in some video collaboration software. The best ones allow you to leave comments directly on the video and keep feedback organized in one place.
Make sure everyone in the working group knows when feedback is due and stick to those deadlines.
Step 5: Communicate with Your Video Creator
Whether you’re working with an internal video creation team or a video production vendor, make sure they understand your goals, timeline, and review process. They should know who the major stakeholders are and who their point of contact is.
Sharing your goals and timeline with the production team empowers them to help your project stay in scope. They can advise on whether an idea works toward the goal or against it. They can let you know whether your timeline is realistic and also help keep the project on deadline.
Step 6: Stand Your Ground
Even when you have a clear goal and timeline, everyone knows their role, and you have a review process in place, it seems like there’s always at least one stakeholder who pushes the boundaries. Often this person is well-meaning and enthusiastic. They’re trying to help, but their creativity is running away with them.
If your resident idea generator is a junior person on the team, you may be able to just thank them for their feedback and move on. That may not work with more senior contributors. The best thing you can do to avoid letting a CEO or Director derail projects with last-minute feedback, is to remind them early and often of the timelines, goals, and review process.
One way to keep stakeholders happy while avoiding scope creep is to keep an idea document. Any great idea that doesn’t quite fit this project goes into the document for future use. That way, people don’t feel like their idea is lost if it doesn’t make it into this one project. Plus, it gives you a jump start on the next video.
Collaborating with Outside Vendors
The above steps become a bit more complicated if you’re not the project manager but are the person in your company responsible for coordinating with an outside vendor to get a project done. In that case, many of the above steps still apply, but you’ll need to collaborate with the vendor-side project manager to complete them successfully.
You should expect that the vendor-side project manager will provide some flexibility, while also commuting the boundaries that will keep the project on track. Your job is to define the scope of the project based on quality, needs, brand guidelines, legal boundaries and the shifting desires of stakeholders.
While contracts should define scope, projects are only really successful when there is good faith on both sides. Respect for needs and boundaries is the only way to make sure a budget is completed on time and on budget.
When collaborating with outside vendors make sure you:
- Define expectations early and in detail
- Share updates when necessary
- Schedule appropriate reviews and set limits on feedback timelines
- Keep all stakeholders in the loop
In return, you can expect your vendor-side project manager to let you know if a decision may impact the timeline or budget, keep you informed of the status of the project, and provide opportunities for feedback at defined intervals.
Bring In Video Production Professionals
Experienced video production professionals are well acquainted with scope management. They can offer advice and support to keep your project on track. At IdeaRocket, we help organizations in Healthcare, SaaS, Human Resources, and beyond produce successful video projects on time and on budget. Contact us today to get started.
