Managing projects
Alex (350 points) | Tue, 2009-04-28 10:10I wanted to draw on the many and varied expertise here to ask how each of you deals with projects where the client delivers late or changes the project's scope/goal. This is something I'm seeing more of as the recession causes people to try to do more with less - not always with positive results.
So, what are your tips or methods for keeping a good relationship with a client under pressure?
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Include these things in the 'terms and conditions" part of your contract. I also have a "Change of Work Order" form that the client is supposed to sign before work can continue (hopefully, for more money!) if the scope of work changes after the job begins under the original contract. To be honest, I don't often use the form, but it's a good thing to have to keep clients from going nuts with extra requests.
Mara
We have a clause or something to that effect here were we will gladly continue to do revisions after the third request at the cost of $200 per revision request. (This is in relation to ad development... if you're talking about something like an entire branding campaign or a web site or something, you'd probably want to charge more depending upon what kind of revisions they're requesting).
Definitely something to add into your contract. Determine what you think is a tolerable amount of revisions before you think it's going to start wasting your time (and eventually losing money). Add whatever fee you feel is appropriate based on what kind of project it is.
The revision fees are good at either helping the client think twice before going bonkers with change requests, or they're good at compensating you for the extra time they're taking up with all their changes.
As far as working with a client where you don't have a fee set up in their contract... well, I'd try to steer them in the direction of "Hey - this is great right now. You need to get this out now and we can come back to this again in (some timeframe) to make needed adjustments based on how well it's performing." (or some sort of line like that). If you perhaps approach it that they're missing a lot of opportunities because they're nit-picking the product and keeping it from going public, they may consider settling for it. This way, you can get a new contract written up that includes the revision fees so the next time they come back to work on the product some more, you're covered. (I'm speaking of this with experience in working with ad designs, though. It might be a LOT more difficult to convince a "moving on then making changes later" if it's something like a logo design that they're planning to print on thousands of business sets and so on).
Solid advice, KellyR.
Mara
Recession or no, charge more and they will soon discover what changes do to their bottom line.
Measure twice, cut once, as they say.
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dirtandrust.com
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