Creating Digital Assets: A clear scope

👉 This is part of the Creating Digital Assets series.

Scope is where a good portion of productised service magic lives.

Not enough, and folks won’t see the value.

Too broad, and you end up spending far too much time with this dude:

Whatever you’re delivering needs enough buffer to allow for minor course corrections, but ultimately you want to set the agenda.

That’s a lot of abstracts, so using BrandPocket again as the example…

The scope for a BrandPocket account is contained to creating a fixed set of digital assets for an existing brand, then placing them onto a sharable dashboard.

It’s fairly tight:

1. Each account has a certain set of inclusions, and importantly, very clear exclusions
2. I create lots of files as part of the service, but it’s not overwhelming – there’s definitely a maximum number of files that I’d need to create for any client – plus there’s a process for creating them which makes it efficient and repeatable (more on the process tomorrow)

And it’s also got wiggle room:

1. I’ll likely need to create more files for one brand than for another, and that’s ok – the process reduces those potentially-scope-creepy-things to minor variations
2. There’s a good chance I’ll be thrown a curveball I haven’t predicted, and will have to adjust for it. As it stands, there’s enough financial buffer in there to cover it… or at least recoup over a few clients, then adjust the process

So again – you set the scope.

Keep it to something you’ve delivered lots of times, know how to do confidently, and can write a process for.

Not a whole big project, but a portion of one.

Like if your service involves diagnosing a problem and then fixing it, you can break off the diagnosing part. VetChat is a great example of this, where you can speak to a vet by phone or video, to know whether you need to go in to see the vet in person.

To be insultingly clear with VetChat, the thing where you pay for a phone or video call is their digital asset – VetChat is the digital asset, not the whole vet practice.

Tomorrow: A tight process.

(Again – if you disagree with anything here, or have more to add, please let me know).