As a freelancer, one of the lesser taught skills is how to properly access and scope your work. Being able to map out exactly how you and when you are going to get all your work done is all that you need to do, but scoping out work can affect both junior and senior freelancers in the market. 

So what exactly is scope? Well, scope can be defined as a description of all the work that needs to get done, and the time needed to do said work. As a freelancer, you're acutely aware that time is money. So when it comes to determining how to scope a freelance project and determining how much you need to charge the client, it's critical that you accurately estimate how much of your time you require. 

So whether you have an entire ad campaign to design, or if you’re writing article deliverables for your clients, or building a website from scratch, the whole formula is still the same. 

Having a good scoping skill is often just using simple maths. So why is it so difficult to do? Hint: it’s mostly fighting the psychology of it all. For example, if you’re given 2 weeks to complete a design job, your first reaction would probably be “Maybe I could do that”. 

However, that’s because you’re thinking more of the good that can happen and disregarding the bad. In reality, it always takes longer than you expect. So, rather than relying on gut feelings, we can use math to figure out if you’ll meet your deadlines.

One danger of not scoping correctly is that you overscope the project, meaning you overestimate the amount of time it'll take to do the work. 

When you overscope, you may be providing pricing to your potential client that's way out of the ballpark of anyone else you're competing against. 

Losing a project because of pricing is inevitable, so don't beat yourself up if that happens. Either the client's budget wasn't realistic or you were undercut by someone who could do that project for a lot less than you could... and there will always be someone out there who will do the work cheaper.

However, if you lose the project because you overscoped the project, that's a mistake that you can learn from. Maybe you didn't understand the client's requirements for the project so you overestimated how much time it would take to do it (and priced accordingly) or you aren't as efficient as you could be so your projects require more hours of work than they need to.

How To Scope Your Project Accurately

Learning how to scope a freelance project accurately is a skill that you will get better at over time if you are aware of it and constantly work at it. Keep paying attention to those moments where you realize you've over or underscoped a project and take notes.

Keep a running list of what you can do to improve your discovery process to prevent misscoping. Add notes to that list whenever you have a moment where you realize you could have done something better to scope more accurately. Did you miss an important aspect of the client's expectations? Did you not dig into what tech the client uses and now you're running into problems accommodating their tech stack? Did you not delve deeply enough into the stylistic likes/dislikes and now you need to backtrack and redesign work?

There are millions of things that can cause a project to go over the scope you set and MOST of them can be traced back to what happens very early in the process during the discovery phase or your estimating phase. When you keep track of where you can improve, your knowledge of how to scope a freelance project and ability to do so quickly and accurately will grow exponentially.

Budgeting your time 

If you’re like most people, it’s difficult to properly plan for your time. That’s because we often think of the big picture scenarios, and miss out on the smaller tasks required. By breaking your time down into digestible chunks, it’s much more manageable! Think of scoping as a budget for your time. 

Let’s use an example of designing a week’s worth of social media posts. 

If you’re doing 5 posts a week, basic math would tell you that 5 posts divided by 5 days would be an average of 1 post a day. So, your workload would be managed in that way. You can continue to break down each task further if it’s useful to do so you can realistically assess the work. 

The real beauty of this technique is that you’ll know when you’re in danger of missing a deadline days, weeks, or even months in advance.

What happens when you go out of scope?

Going out of scope means that you and the client both know and understand that a certain request is outside the bounds of what was initially estimated in terms of scope and pricing. But you are both okay with charging more to accommodate that extra work since it was unforeseen but important to the outcome of the project and its overall success.

For example, a blog post project might include a 700-900 word blog post on the topic of the client's choice, targeting a specific keyword of their choice, with one round of revisions based on provided client feedback. If the client wanted a second round of revisions, resulting in a third version, that would be out of scope and you would be able to reference the contract as evidence that it would take the project out of scope at the provided pricing.

Conclusion

Scoping is about appropriately setting expectations for yourself, your team, and your clients and managers. It’s a rare skill that separates the amateurs from the professionals, and one we think that all freelancers should learn from. 

If you’re still not sure where to start your freelancing journey, why not check out Rtist? We have one of the biggest creative talent communities in Malaysia that matches you with your clients. Check us out now!