How To Use A Statement Of Work

So you’ve finally got your statement of work signed off on – now the real fun of keeping the project on track with the statement of work really begins. If you don’t stick to the statement of work there’s a high possibility you’re going to end up not quite delivering on the project goals or what the client needed as well as late and over budget too. So how do you stick to it and keep your SoW on track?

Know It

Whether you wrote the statement of work or you inherited it from one of your colleagues, you need to know it well – if you don’t, how can you be sure your team is doing the right thing? And it’s always embarrassing it the client brings up something that you’ve written in the statement of work that you’ve totally forgotten about.

Be sure to keep a copy of it on hand. You may even want to print it out and makes notes on it. Log it in your project management software to make sure all relevant team members can access it. Whatever you do, make sure that you can pull it up when you’re on a call or in a meet­ing because whenever it’s in question, everyone will look to you for answers.

Start by taking ownership for it and owning delivery of it. Print it out and have it on your desk so you can quickly refer to it. You need to be best buds with your statement of work. You’re the guardian of the project so if you’re not 100% confident on what’s being delivered, how is anyone else going to know? Get familiar enough with it so that you know the details without having to refer to it. That level ownership is going to inspire confidence in the team as well as the client and enable you to deliver to it.

Spread The Word

It’s not good enough for just you to know the SoW. As digital project managers we’re rarely the ones actually doing the work so our team needs to know it too. Even if they were involved in architecting the statement of work it’s bound to have changed and evolved so make sure they’re fully aware of what success looks like and understand the activities, deliverables, and assumptions. If you fail to communicate the details of the project properly with your team you can find them semi-innocently wandering off course. So circulate the SoW, print copies for them, stick it on the walls of your war room, make it visible, and ensure everyone’s familiar with it.

Get Everyone On Board

Don’t be too dogmatic. Chances are, the team that helped you create the SoW isn’t the team that’s now working on the project. So if your project team thinks that something doesn’t make sense or isn’t ultimately going to drive the success of the project, give them the opportunity to work together to refine the statement of work. If it’s good for the project then you should be able to make a case to the client. There’s never value in doing work simply because the statement of work dictates it – it should always create value for the project.

Keep Talking

Don’t be afraid of bringing up the statement of work in your client meetings – in fact make it a conversation topic in your weekly status meeting. Discuss if the SoW is still valid, and whether things going to plan. If there are things that need to be adjusted, then adjust them and make sure everyone’s aware of the changes. Watch out though – remember all of that work you put into your plan? Don’t let it all go down the drain by succumbing to every new request or pivoting to every new idea.

Watch For Scope Creep

Firstly, what is scope creep? Scope creep is when the scope of a project begins to grow, seemingly sneakily. Typically, it’s when that feature starts off as one thing but somehow (cue clients asking/demanding), slowly evolves or morphs into a much bigger feature that costs more to deliver than was initially scoped.

Clients are always full of good ideas, and often have no idea of the implications of what they’re asking.

Classic scope creep examples are when a client asks for an additional round of creative amends that weren’t accounted for, or when a client asks for a ‘favour’ which wasn’t budgeted for, like an additional format for a banner campaign.

Watch out, too, for gold-plating; it’s when scope creep is our fault.

Someone on your team wants to do an awesome job and so starts over delivering and giving the client more than they paid for, which would be great, if it wasn’t for the fact that similarly to scope creep, it hasn’t been accounted for, so takes the project over budget.

But back to scope creep. How to avoid it?

The first step to avoid scope creep it is to make sure you’re identifying it – call it out for what it is as quickly as you can. To identify scope creep you need to know your project scope well enough so you know what’s in and what’s out of the statement of work.

Be wary when a client starts using phrases like these:

Can we just..

One little thing…

Would you mind doing me a favour…

If they’re saying things like that, it means they know it’s not really included in the project scope and you need to remind them of it. Refer back to the statement of work and help them understand that what they’re asking for wasn’t included.

After identifying the scope creep, try chatting the situation through with the client and give them some options:

Can you trade their request for a new feature by taking out something similarly sized?

Does extending the timeline create any efficiencies?

Can you include their new feature request in a new project?

Assuming it’s more work, you should issue a change request – basically, an update to the statement of work that details what you’re going to do with a description of the change, explain how you’re going to do it with the revised approach (explaining what you’re doing differently from the original project scope), as well as the budget and timeline implications.

Start How You Need To Finish

Finally, remember that projects that go off the rails often do so in the very early stages of the project when PM’s don’t want to rock the boat by raising issues when they should. The knock-on impact of being too flexible in the first few weeks of a project can be huge.

Not only does it leave you with catching up to do but it sets an expectation with the client that the scope of work is more flexible than it really is. That first version of your plan is your baseline and it outlines every step you need to take to get from the beginning to the end of your project. You don’t just make these things up!