Creepy scope

Scope has two personalities:

• Creepy
• Obedient

We all know Creepy scope.

It’s the extra work that creeps in when you’ve already started a project, like:

• When you agree to layout a magazine, and your client asks you to “quickly” rebrand the whole thing.
• Or when you’re photographing a wedding, and the couple asks you to drive to the lookout for some sunset photos.
• Or when you’re writing copy for a landing page, and your client asks you to whip-up an email sequence. And a “thank you” page. And a funny 404 page.

So creepy.

Then there’s Obedient scope.

Sometimes it just obeys by itself… either your client doesn’t ask for anything out of scope, or if they do, you’re a good biscuit and advise them that you can address that in a separate project.

Other times, it obeys because it kinda can’t disobey… there’s no real option to go outside of it – it’s fixed.

They’re created differently.

Creepy scope is often created in collaboration with your client (or worse, by them alone). Obedient scope is set by you.

I arrived at that pretty gently, but that’s super critical.

👉 It’s set by you.

With a fixed-price service, you just HAVE to set the scope.

If you’ve ever tried to sell an open-ended project at a fixed price, there’s a good chance you saw how wrong it can go.

Set the price + set the scope = scope obeys.

That’s the perfect-world scenario.

Real world scenario with examples tomorrow 👍