Agency Lesson: Why Poor Project Planning Is Killing Your Margins

Lever three, I mean, you know, this one engagement design and approach, just this is how projects are done or engagements are handled. and you know we one of the things that are really you know kind of profitability killers when like you don't have a good plan you know you don't have a good process structure of like how you're going to get it done and so there's a lot of you know unnecessary meetings there's a lot of just kind of back and forth and you know that kind of eats stuff up eats time up and you know this is not too uncommon for agencies that are doing something for the first time, let's say.

So it's like, hey, we've never done this type of project before, but it looks exciting. We're going to dive into it. And then you got to figure out how to do it. You got to build a plane while you're flying it, right?

And so there's a lot of waste that happens in those situations, which sometimes is okay. It's an investment and maybe you try to do a similar project later and learn from that. But this is where the engagement design approach is super important. Maybe we could speak to kind of like, yeah, what are some ways to be smart about engagement design and approach?

Yeah, I think where possible, you know, it's like don't reinvent the wheel for things that are the same every single time, like how you onboard your project team, how you onboard your client, you know, how you think about QA and like making sure that you're allocating your time for it. Like, I think one of the big things in the design of like an engagement is like, create the project schedule all the way through and really think about how you're going to get that engagement done, including what are the meetings?

Like, do you need a meeting, right? Or, or could it just be like a, a post or an email or some kind of async communication? You know are you do you need a client feedback Have you budgeted for that time And you know if that downtime for your team could your team then be working on something else And then just thinking about like all of the nitty aspects of a project from start to finish and accounting for it as much as possible because then, like, at least there's, you know, there's going to be some variation, but there is some predictability to how the project's going to get done and how you want it to get done.

Yeah, 100%. And I can't not talk about this because it's such a pet peeve of mine and it just drove me nuts. But like the the project, you know, schedule or project plan a lot of times like and I don't like I think the thing that I would hate to see is like when, you know, sometimes project managers, account managers, whoever is creating it. they're so focused on it being perfect and like super detailed that they, it just never gets done.

And in some ways it's an incomplete picture. And, you know, to that is say like, look, what's more important is just first, you know, get a basic sense of the shape of a project, like, you know, from start to finish. You don't have to have it perfect. You know, don't let perfect be the enemy of good just you know fill it in so that everyone has a as a sense of like hey look over the next four months five months these are the things that are going to happen and this is the launch date and then work backwards but what happens a lot of times is they're trying to meticulously plan every single week and then you know getting more inputs more inputs and then because of that it's an open-ended launch date and by the time they finish adding everything, you realize, wow, this is two months, three months longer than, you know, we had talked to the client about.

And so, you know, big thing is, you know, start with the end in mind. And then also just, you know, don't sweat the details until you've kind of gotten the structure and the container done. And then from there, you got some constraints to work with to solve the problem out. So that my rant on project Yeah No yeah It almost like start with the end work backwards What are the big milestones And then how do you get to those big milestones And it kind of the analogy of building the plane as you flying it There's some things that you'll need to figure out, and the next week might be the most clear.

But as long as you know, like, hey, we've got a big deadline in two weeks, how do we get there and make sure that we're hitting those major milestones is important. Yeah, definitely. And then anything else on the design and approach side of these engagements to kind of improve or increase profitability? Yeah, the other thing is just thinking about what does our team need to do versus what the client's team need to do in an engagement.

And sometimes if it's not clear, you may just end up taking on work that you didn't need to. Like maybe the client could have gone in and populated a bunch of content on the site. or gone through and done some kind of UAT testing that you weren't clear about upfront. So you just think through.

It's not just a one-sided thing when you're working through an engagement. Yeah, definitely. Okay, let's move on to level four. So scope management and change orders.

So let's talk about this because this has to do with scope creep, which is in many ways one of the biggest threats to profitability. Yeah. So we talked about scoping, right? I think that was the first lever.

And that's, honestly, like scope management starts there at the business stage. When you create an SAW, you agree on a scope. And the more you can be specific about like deliverables, like rounds of revisions, like who does what in the user acceptance phase, you know, if all of that isn't outlined, it gives your team very little to push back on because it's, you know, it's very open-ended. But as long as those aspects are clearly documented you know exactly what being done And if something is clearly out of scope really going through and having a formal process to document you know how to handle those situations yeah i say vague scopes are one of the biggest liabilities when it comes to profitability because you can get take it for a ride as an agency if you if you're super vague about you know what you're actually delivering.

So no, 100% there. But let's say you've written a tight scope, and then, you know, client is definitely asking for more. What are some ways to kind of handle that? Yeah, it's sometimes an art to figure out how to navigate that.

So, you know, let's say a request comes in, so you'll say, hey, let's do this in the second phase, you know, we'll defer this to the future. And that might be an acceptable solution for now. Or there can be a trade-off saying, you know, this thing that you wanted, maybe that's not important. And this new request that's come in, maybe this should take priority.

So why don't we trade those? We'll do this new thing and we won't do this other thing. And then there's no change in budget, but there's a change in kind of the scope of what we're doing. And then the third option is obviously just scope it out, ask for more money and get more budget for the change that's about to happen.

Yeah. And like you said, it is an art because you have to understand and just put ourselves in that position of being buyers of anything, right? We expected to pay a certain price and maybe some things weren't clear. So we're just asking for this thing that we thought was part of it.

And then for us to just immediately get hit with a change order, won't feel good. Like, hey, you're going to pay more. But then, you know, if there's a conversation around it, maybe an understanding, then, you know, you're going to feel better. So I think it is definitely an art.

I know, you know, you don't want to get into a situation where the client, you know, I think the phrase is, you know, stop nickeling and dining me or, you know, just because then, you know, you're just jeopardizing kind of the health of that relationship in the long run.