Most people are averse to confrontation. Especially confrontations where they could be painted in a negative light.
But there are ways to broach the topic of payment without coming off like Uncle Scrooge. Take a look at our list of tips to help ensure you always get paid while improving your relationships with clients.
We’ve learned a few tricks over the years when it comes to getting sales. You’ll never guess what our secret is.
Open doors by choosing your focus. Here’s how specializing leads to more opportunities and more profit.
I remember the last straw for me before we started building BrainLeaf. A developer had given us an estimate of 50 hours to complete a feature set, but 400 hours later it still wasn’t done. Frustrated and upset is a huge understatement of what I was feeling. I had to deal with big losses, multiple missed deadlines, a frustrated and demoralized team, and a very upset client. Sound familiar?
How do you know you want to work on a new project? Here is what I look at when I am considering a new project and a new client, specifically a SaaS project.
All work, at any level in the organization, should be double-checked by somebody. That does not mean that the owner of the business should be looking over the collective shoulders of every employee in every department. That’s neither desirable nor feasible.
We want to make sure that we have plenty of time for conversations and time planned for internal company exchanges at clients’ businesses. We need to be able to send data out and get data back from the client and account for this time in our projections. Without time budgeted for this, you won’t be able to manage the project well, and things will start to fall apart!
Scope creep is an uncontrolled growth in the scope of a project. This happens because of an unclear initial scope of work which is then added to with a lack of checks and balances in project management processes.
A Scope of Work or SOW for a website, web-app, mobile-app, application, or software-as-a-service (SaaS) has a few specific aspects which we're coving in today's article. These are the: Contract Creative brief Information architecture (IA) Project flows or wireframes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxV1KULezdc When you're running an agency, or really any business for that matter, it's almost always mid to high-level stress. Which is why you NEED to think about your strategies and execution before acting. The business is busy, and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBQJ8AWnAOQ Knowing your priorities is one of the most important things you can do in life and in business. When you know your priorities, you can make decisions that you stand by every time. Here is a story about how I learned what was...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpLlEY-yN_U Are Inaccurate Estimates Killing Your Business? This is something that happened yesterday and today that I want to share with you. We were working on creating estimates for a fair sized project, perhaps a 3 or 4 month...
What is the Google Sandbox and what does it mean for you? Find out here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPa8Y3aJl4g A Proposal And An SOW Are Not The Same Thing! So many design, marketing, and even web development agencies do not have a clear understanding of a project scope of work vs. a project proposal. Many companies include only one...
Building a Scope of Work For Your Web Project Means Knowing How to Quote an App Development Project The Right Way With timelines, costs, features, and platforms, there's a lot to consider when you quote an app development project. The mobile app market is experiencing...
A guest post written by David Parmelee Scoping a software, web, or app project is not just a once-and-done exercise Whether you create your product for external clients, consumers, or internal users, your users will eventually see some version of your product. Maybe...
A guest post from biz-dev hero Mark Thomasson Freelancing comes with plenty of perks and difficulties. Scope creep can be one of the greatest obstacles in the world of a freelancer, and with substantial consequences. When you fall into a situation where your workload...
Writing a Scope of Work (SOW) for a website This document discusses the general items you need in a SOW for a website, but because projects can vary so much, you may need to include more items in your SOW. Today, we’re going to look at how to produce a Scope of Work...
In 2016 alone we had three ongoing projects who were quite successful, but the initial project managers that we were working with left and new product owners were assigned to work with us accordingly. One of the transitions was even more successful than before, but...
Guest post by Amelia Wong ESTABLISH YOUR GAME PLAN The audience’s time is valuable. The stakeholder wants to know that the UX professional is effectively achieving the goals and the team is all on the same page. Initially clarifying objectives helps all parties...
Video By Jason Long Good Fast Cheap, Choose Two (Transcript) Alright, today's lesson is on good, cheap, fast, choose two. What this is, this is a saying that we have in software, app, web development. They can also be applied to many, many, many other places like...
Guest post by Simone Smith Missing a deadline is something that happens even to the best of us. Whether you got sick and couldn't finish your tasks on time or the project took you much longer than expected, one thing is clear – you're about to miss the deadline and...
Why Scoping Matters Had I scoped every project I had ever worked on, countless dollars would have been saved, countless tears wouldn't have been shed, and I probably could have added years to my life. You see, when you don't scope your project well, you automatically...
What’s that thing everyone always says? Something like, “the customer is always right.” Right. But in web design and freelancing, we quite often forget to choose the right customers. Did your mom ever tell you to choose your friends wisely? Mine did. And you should be...
A guest post from Mario Peshev, owner and WordPress Architect at DevriX Smaller agencies and consultants are often afraid of swimming in deep water when it comes to serious business leads. If you have spent many years in the market, successfully running your business,...
This is the first of a several part series on the process of scoping a pricing web and app projects. Here we're just going over some of the basics and making sure we're all on the same page as far as definitions, general process, etc. before moving onto more...
Whether you’re taking the plunge into freelancing and consulting or running a studio, there is one question that always looms over you: how am I going to price my services? This is one of the questions I’ve answered more than almost anything else over the years. There...
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