Q: One of my clients is a new day spa, and they wanted some brochures on their different services. The project manager wanted to keep an educational tone with the selling part as secondary. I created drafts based on this and needed a little more info, so she referred me to the COO. The COO looked at my drafts and told me that he wanted the brochures to brand and sell, not educate.
So now those two are butting heads; in the meantime, I’ve got brochures that are about 70% done. There’s going to have to be some heavy revising, but I’m not sure what I should do about billing. I do have a clause in my agreement about the number of revisions and scope, but this seems to be somewhere in the middle, and I’m not sure how to best determine what falls out of scope. I’m thinking of just saying, “The project manager agreed to X and Y, and anything that falls out of that is out of scope, not a revision, and will be billed accordingly.”
A: That’s EXACTLY what you should do. If indeed the first manager you met with and with whom you discussed the project agreed to a certain course of action, you had to assume that she had the authority to make that decision, and no reason to believe that decision would be questioned by someone else. Hence, it becomes the equivalent of a direction change and hence, you’re back on the clock for the amount of time it takes to course-correct. Needless to say, make sure your initial contact is in agreement with the change, and if there’s any question about that, make sure she and the COO get it settled between them before you proceed.