How to Scope a New Project (Determining whether taking on a project is good for your bottom line).
Author of this post: Daniel Schutzsmith | About Blog Authors »
I’ve always been a fan of Sessions’ classes because they can help many aspiring designers make that jump into the industry with guided lessons from real design professionals. So once you’ve broken ground into the design world you’ll need to start thinking about how the business side of the industry works. One of the most important things that you’ll need to determine for the projects you take on as a freelancer, or as a principal in a design studio, is “when is a project good for me to take on”. The following blog post is an excerpt from a worksheet I have put together, which helps me determine whether a project will be good for me financially, professionally, and emotionally. One thing to note, these questions should be answered before you write a proposal, typically at the new business meeting or initial phone conversation.
Mission & Objectives
What type of project is it (website, animation, photo shoot, etc.)? How will it be deployed (internet, CD-Rom, advertising campaign, word of mouth)?
Simply put, we first need to define exactly what the project is.
This means we need to define what the deliverables for the project will be and how the client will exactly be using those deliverables to fulfill their mission and objectives (see below).
What is the mission stated by the client?
Every project has a mission. If it is an website redesign of a corporate website then the mission may be “to gain new clients through a new online identity”. If it is a poster for a movie then the mission may be “to win an oscar/clio for best advertising campaign of a motion picture”. The client will almost always give you the mission of the project right away, but once in a while you may need to pry it out of them. Regardless, don’t automatically take the mission the client tells you at face value, instead, look deeper into it and see if that is really the mission.
What are the objectives that will reinforce the mission?
Objectives are items like, in the case of the movie poster (in specific order):
1. Generate a 50% increase in supporting merchandise of the movie (toys, posters, cd’s, dvd’s, etc.)
2. Generate a 10% increase in ticket sales
3. Adopt a new standard design template for movie posters
4. Create buzz among a demographic of 20 - 30 year old urban hipsters
Again, the client will usually know exactly what the objectives are that they want, but it is your job as the designer to make sure that
these are achievable with the solution you will be providing them.
If you see something that doesn’t seem like it could become a reality, then you’ll need to assess it further and really break down the method for achieving that objective before you take the project on.
Does the mission make sense with the objectives? If not, what does the real mission look like?
What the client tells you, and what the truth is are not always the same. Often the reason for this is on no major fault of the client, but rather, simply happens because the client doesn’t know how to really determine what their mission ultimately is. For instance, in the case of the movie poster’s objectives above, we notice that the
#1 objective is to “generate a 50% increase in supporting merchandise of the movie”, but we’ll notice that the mission above is “to win an oscar/clio for best advertising campaign of a motion picture”. What we immediately notice is that the mission and objectives do not compliment each other at all. We can immediately see that the main emphasis from the client might be on trying to win awards, rather than following the objectives that they have outlined to create an increase in sales and generate buzz. So how will we solve this situation? We’ll state to the client what we think the actual mission is and make sure they understand that they are not supporting their mission with their current objectives.
I hope you have found these questions useful! This is just an excerpt of all of the questions I ask before taking on a project (almost 25 in total), so if you’d like to see all the questions then feel free to download the worksheet download the worksheet in PDF format from the Graphic Define website.
