CMU School of Drama


Friday, October 30, 2009

Scope Creep and SMART Freelancing

Men With Pens: "What I am questioning is a wicked little freelancer money-suck that runs rampant in business. It sneaks in when you aren’t looking. It slowly drains you and you don’t even realize it. It’s the creature that turns every profitable project into a total loss. And all of you have had this beast feed off your business at one time or another.
It’s called scope creep."

2 comments:

Cody said...

This is really stating the obvious. You shouldn't work outside of your contract without a discussion with the other party first. There are so many people int he world who will not hesitate to take advantage of the situation. Though I think the author is right, that this is a frequent mistake of young freelancers. And this absolutely applies to the theatrical world, and to any contract of any kind.

The key is just to be honest and reasonable in your discussions.

Also, as managers, we should consider what we are asking for when asking for something from someone we have contracted. It would be honest to bring up the fact that we are asking for things outside of the contract.

Unknown said...

The big part about avoiding scope creep, which wasn't stressed enough in the article, is that the requirements (or the "Agreed upon") needs to be made very clear ahead of time. Otherwise, the project is easily open to interpretation on what the finished state is.

The example of scope creep that was provided makes it unclear when you would stop doing work. It's hard to specify the end state of the work when it is something as subjective as a 350-word blurb.