Scopey – Waiving Goodbye to Scope Creep in Projects

Chris Barnard: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Bear Business Vodcast with me, Chris Barnard, from FeedbackFans.com. Today, my guest is the founder of the software business Scopey, and we look at how their unique software can help your agency or brand solve that age-old problem of scope creep in projects.

Chris Barnard: Jen, hi, thank you for joining me on the next episode of Bear Business. Our topic today is one that I think probably keeps professional services people up at night, certainly responsible for more late nights than even Vodka Red Bull, I would say, as our topic is Scope Creep, and specifically your software, Scopey, and how it deals with scope creep. Can you just tell us a bit about your background and what inspired the creation of your software Scopey?

Jenna Farrell: Hi Chris, thanks so much for having me here today. Um, I’d love to tell you more about Scopey and Scope Creep. So, um, I’m in Ireland now, but before Ireland, I was living in Melbourne, Australia, where I had my own digital design agency. So I ran that for 10 years with my co-founder, and Scope Creep was probably the biggest bottleneck to our business growth. It was, uh, probably causing us about 15 percent revenue loss per project, sometimes a lot more on larger projects. And, from that, just the stress of managing scopes of work with clients, um, and change requests, you know, figuring out what was in and out of scope, that was very stressful. And, um, we tried lots of tools, but nothing really addressed scope creep. And that’s where it was actually a day I saw, um, how stressed my co-founder actually was, and I was like, okay, we’ve got to do something about this. And that’s where the idea for Scopey was born.

Chris Barnard: It’s a fascinating challenge, isn’t it? Because it’s one of those things that goes on in the dark. It’s something that, inside agency teams and professional services teams, it’s obviously chatted about a lot. It’s whether, um, this client, uh, has made these changes. Everyone runs away to try and find the old dusty document that may or may not say what was in scope and what everyone agreed.

So why do you think scope creep happens? Where has this problem come from? Do you think it’s been a problem that’s always been around in times of professional services or something that’s evolved in the modern day?

Jenna Farrell: I’d say it’s definitely been around for a long time. And it’s funny that you mentioned looking for the old scope of work document that was, that happened all the time would be halfway through a project. The client has asked for something and everyone’s trying to find the old document, which is buried in some email.

It’s a PDF and the project has changed so much since, you know, that document was created. I think that’s the big issue that the old way is just too static and too slow. And especially with creative projects, creative innovation. You need fluid and live documentation to match the nature of that type of work. Um, and so, I guess getting back to your question, scope, you know, how, how does scope creep happen? I believe scope creep happens in conversation. And I think this is why no other tool has worked. Has solved scope creep because every, you know, if you look at project management tools, they focus on tasks that have been approved and put into the project management tool. Scopey focuses on conversations. Uh, so we create scopes of work, but then we focus on all those new requests that come in from conversations and a lot of the time it’s just sprinkled in email threads or video calls, you know, you’ve got a client on a call to a junior designer and unapproved requirements are just slipping in. And so we see Scopey as, um, well, a good analogy that I like is project management is the busy kitchen in a restaurant. There’s chaos, there’s flames, you’ve got Gordon Ramsay yelling at everyone in there, and that serves its purpose for managing tasks with your team. I think project management is great for that. Scopey is the menu your client can choose what they like, they can order from, make tweaks, and then the waiter takes that order through to the busy kitchen. You do not want your client going into that busy kitchen.

Chris Barnard: You make a couple of great points there. The fluidity point’s so interesting because development methodologies have changed so much over time, haven’t they? I always think of my time working in London in tech, particularly at the start of my career. Everything was a waterfall methodology.

And that was how everything was. Your scope document was sort of enshrined like a Bible as soon as it had kind of been put down. But of course, since then, we’ve had the development of agile methodologies, people using Kanban, sort of continuous development. And I certainly see your software fitting into that type of mindset.

And that has become the default ideology in, not just for development teams, I would say, for businesses, Jen. Is that something you’re experiencing with businesses? They are like, actually, this is the software to get us away from stuffy old PDFs and into the modern age of, you know, these scopes of work are changing quite naturally.

No one should be scared of that. Doesn’t have to be a difficult conversation. It can now be a conversation informed by and helped by Scopey.

Jenna Farrell: Definitely. Scopey would definitely fit the more kind of agile and more modern approaches to work. And I was actually speaking about Scopey the other day with James Lute, project manager here in Ireland, who teaches Agile methodology, and he really loves Scopey because, you know, it helps prioritise what’s really important and high value to the project. And it does that by showing clients the value of out-of-scope work. So Scopey picks up all the change requests that happen in emails. Um, so you can put a value on that and then when clients actually see a value on their change requests and, you know, new ideas, and their wishlists, it quickly prioritises what’s actually important. And I think that’s kind of what agile project management is. Even if it’s not always on value, it’s always on effort and time. So Scopey is kind of pushing that back to the clients, you know, asking them what’s important, valuing all the out-of-scope work.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s something lost sometimes, isn’t it? I suppose some people might say that historically sort of the value wouldn’t necessarily be in the scope of work, but actually, I think it’s very helpful it being in there because I think a lot of the great development companies I see are always talking about what is high value. Let’s make sure that we’re not spending time or wasting the majority of our time on things that we see as low value on. Scopey is certainly a system that helps you kind of work that out between you. Do you think that part of this problem with scope creep and why it is such a, as you mentioned, if it’s 15 percent of revenue, I’m sure at some companies it’s even higher than that.

Do you think a part of the problem is people haven’t been trained properly in adequately managing scope creep? Is that sort of an issue that you’ve seen from businesses?

Jenna Farrell: Uh, definitely. So it’s interesting. Most agencies actually don’t have dedicated project managers. So I think agencies are very good at looking much bigger than they actually are, whereas, you know, 85 percent of agencies actually have less than five people, you would, you’d be surprised because you look at the types of clients they have, which are these big, you know, car brands.

And even those large agencies may only have 15 or 20 people. And so there are not, a lot of them don’t have dedicated project managers. So you’ve got account managers, designers who are actually managing projects and all these change requests. And I think that’s why, you know, there’s not that hard pushback on, um, well, first off, having a very detailed scope of work, which is, you know, the key, the key and then, um, all those changes that come in because, you know, it can completely derail a project if you’re just adding in, adding in too much. So, yeah, Scopey helps with that because it’s all about prioritisation and what’s important. And I think Scopey just helps people that are juggling multiple roles with managing the scope, the scope of work.

Chris Barnard: And as you say, a lot of these conversations, they kind of go on very organically and it’s usually at the start of a project or further on in the project. At the start of a project, it might be the excitement. It might be something that has triggered a new great idea, right? So, very organically. I think sometimes people think scope creep is always bad, but it’s not always necessarily bad. I think a lot of the time it’s kind of a refinement process over time of what you’re doing together and making it better. And it might be over time as well. Things that weren’t thought about in the original meetings.

And actually, it’s a great value add for everybody to put on at some point in the project. And with Scopey, making that so much easier without you having to format the document again. Hopefully not have to go through accounts again. So I know you’ve got some integrations there with sort of accounting software that would help.

So do you want to just tell us a little bit more about the businesses that have been early adopters of Scopey and how they’ve been using the software, how that is transforming their project ops?

Jenna Farrell: Yeah. So we’ve had a lot of small to medium agencies using our kind of light version that we’ve just launched. What you were just saying was actually very interesting because scope creep is also an opportunity. You know, everything’s so competitive right now. There’s so much business development you can do with your existing clients. And that’s the point of Scopey. You could be making at least 15 percent more per project with strategic upselling, charging for out-of-scope work and showing your clients what else is possible. You know, as leaders, your client comes to you because they’ve got a problem, but we’re not telling them all the options and possibilities that are out there.

And that’s where you can use Scopey to upsell your services as well, while also giving your client a much better end result. And so I guess, yeah, we’re seeing agencies, that’s how they’re using Scopey to document those things that they were doing for free and then document them in their service library as optional services.

So it’s easier to upsell. We found when we were interviewing people at the beginning, in our research process, a lot of creative people find it hard to upsell because they thought it was detrimental to the client relationship. And we believe by showing the client upfront what the options are, and this also includes risks to the projects and what those possible costs will be, then that’s a very easy way to upsell, and Scopey is kind of doing it for you. Um, and so we’ve got creative agencies using it for those reasons, but then we’ve also got people like lawyers and ESG consultants, um, and even an insurance broker using it. So it’s interesting to see how scope creep happens in different industries and how they use Scopey to document services in their library and think about how they can charge for out-of-scope work.

Chris Barnard: It’s a great point because I think naturally everyone will gravitate to agencies constantly putting together these scopes of work back and forth. And so it’s certainly going to help people there. But equally, on the professional services side, I imagine since the beginning of time, scope creep has found its way into professional services just by the nature of those relationships.

And I think, in a lot of ways, interesting on the cultural side, as you mentioned, sort of upsell cross-sell those great agencies and consultants. I suppose great professional services people are often those people who are heralded for being so good at cross-selling and upselling, as you rightly say. Do you think it could be a bit of a cultural thing?

Have you noticed since, uh, obviously you’re in Ireland now, but that’s not where originally you were, do you think it’s a bit of a culture thing? Are we a bit too bashful, maybe, across the UK and Ireland about how we approach upselling? We think it’s going to somehow interfere with the current project or it might put someone’s nose out of joint.

Is that, is that the reason why we’re so bad at cross-selling and upselling?

Jenna Farrell: Possibly. Like I, I’m a New Zealander, so we’re actually very similar to Irish and UK people. We’re probably people pleasers as well. We’re like, “Oh yeah, we can do that for you,” and, you know, we probably do it to ourselves a lot. I, you know, we keep getting told we need to be more American when we’re pitching and selling ourselves. The Americans come across a lot more confident and are very good at speaking and probably upselling. But I think the thing is, and I actually wrote a post on this very topic this morning, you can’t think of it as selling. You need to think of it as consulting, because at the end of the day, you’re not trying to push products on someone just to buy them. You’re actually thinking about somebody’s overall business goals, and you need to think past the project and think of the best ways to use their budget. I think when you think about it like that, it’s a lot easier because you’re educating your client on all the options that they have. And, you know, they don’t need to, the good thing about Scopey is you don’t need to sell all of that upfront. It’s a live document so you can, you know, you can show options during the project, but I think that’s the mindset we need to have.

It’s like clients come to you because you’re an expert in your field and you need to guide them. I use the term upselling, but it’s really consulting and, you know, showing them what features would benefit this project or, um, you know, I think when you look at it like that, it’s a lot easier and clients want that too. Clients hate not knowing what’s going on and they want you to guide them. Like, they don’t want, if a client comes with a website, they don’t want you to just build a website. They want you to solve their business problem. And so you need to give them all the options, let them know all the risks, and show them what they can get for their budget.

Chris Barnard: It’s so interesting you mentioned client education in particular. I was having a chat with a friend of mine the other day who is a Google Ads manager. Uh, very much, uh, quite a well-known one. And he likes to remind me all the time how well known he is, Jen. Uh, but he was telling me of a situation. I like having conversations with him. Not because we agree. I think we don’t agree on more things than we do agree on. But he was telling me of a scenario that made me kind of, um, sort of made me think, which was that a client had come to him and it was a situation where that client was leaving his agency and he’d come to him to sort of say, okay, we’re having a exit interview or a wash up with we’re finishing off.

Um, No one’s happy, but you know, everyone can come to an end with it. Um, what would your advice be? What sort of questions should I ask the agency so that I can pass on knowledge for the next agency? And he very abruptly said to me, I sort of intervened and said, Well, actually, your relationship, you as the person on the brand, but who doesn’t really know how to run a Google Ads account, you know, with a low knowledge, to that agency person who has a high knowledge running the Google ads account.

You sort of mining him for little nuggets of information is actually not a relevant conversation. It’s not a conversation that’s going to help you. Uh, you’re not going to learn what you think you’re going to learn from it. And I found that quite challenging because I come from the background, particularly from my consultancy side of that.

It is your responsibility, right? To educate the client to, uh, if they are. You know, low level knowledge about your your area, your sector, your expertise, then it is actually part of your job as being a good consultant. You know, I imagine the great consultants do it to educate that client and make them better at that.

So scope creep doesn’t happen as much. And there’s more of a greater understanding of what’s in in the process and not in the process. Do you see elements of truth in that? Was I was I wrong to be so. Against kind of what you were saying in that sort of aspect. Is there that kind of high knowledge, low knowledge?

Is that another reason why we get scope creep so often maybe?

Jenna Farrell: Yes, I think, I think so. Like, um, it’s like, if you get a freelancer, they’re not going to guide you at all. They’re going to do exactly what you’ve asked. But if you went to somebody that’s got, you know, a much higher rate, you know, you’re paying for that experience. You’re paying for that 20 years of knowledge or, you know, a degree in this and someone who’s done lots of these things. Types of projects. And I think that’s very important. Like, um, and we encourage in Scopey to start productizing your time too. So somebody that does have 20 years experience, like, like we think you should try and get out of that whole hourly, hourly billing as well, and trying to, you know, the reason why you can do something in an hour is because you’ve got all that experience.

So that shouldn’t just be an hourly, an hourly rate there.

Chris Barnard: So, Jen, how do you deal with the scope creep at Scopey? Because as a SaaS development roadmap, you have community engagement in that. There must be a lot of businesses who see the potential of your software, uh, want to use it within their stack, uh, perhaps pushing you in all sorts of directions now, um, that might not be in line with your vision.

How do you manage that as a business? How do you decide, um, what should be developed next and what features and integration should go into the platform?

Jenna Farrell: This brings up a really good point because we’ve also all been the scope creeper. And even with Scopey, like I’m always having these ideas of how we can make things better and my development team are just like, no, so I do it myself. But, and especially as we’re testing with clients and watching how they use it and you want to give everyone the white glove service, especially at the beginning. So we want to please everyone and they’ve got all these requests and ideas. It is very important to focus on what’s the problem we’re solving. And that’s scope creep. There’s obviously a lot of great features we could add around, you know, proposals or, you know, management, but then we start turning into the tools that exist. And so way we keep scope creep happening on Scopey is does this help businesses stop leaking revenue to scope creep. Will this help them upsell? Will this make the scope of work clearer? So we really try and tie down all our features to, is it solving the main problem?

Chris Barnard: And the natural lifeblood in a SaaS ecosystem, of course, is the integrations and what you can integrate with quickly. Do you want to just tell us a bit about the integrations you’ve done so far, how you chose them, and what your approach is going to be for integrations going forward?

Jenna Farrell: Definitely. So we have integrated with Xero and Asana. That gives a lot of businesses a complete workflow. They can create scopes of work, send them to their project management tool to manage within the team once they’ve been approved by the client, and then send the scopes of work to the accounting software as well. We really want Scopey to fit seamlessly within the workflows that people are using. So as we’re starting with creative and tech agencies, we’re looking at the project management tools they use, the accounting tools that they use, um, and would be looking into, you know, things like HubSpot and Salesforce in the future as well.

Chris Barnard: And I understand in the early stages of this business, um, you approached Enterprise Ireland about funding. Do you want to just tell the listeners a bit about that process, why you chose to do that, um, why you took that on and, and what the result of that’s going to be? Is there anything that you have to provide to Enterprise Ireland as part of that agreement?

Jenna Farrell: Uh, yeah. So when I first moved to Ireland two years ago, Scopey was actually a side project and I was encouraged to go speak to my local enterprise office here. So they’re dotted around the country. They, um, got me told me to interview for the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers Program. I did that and got into phase two, which is, um, six months it’s funded and they help you develop the business and, um, really get you thinking past just the product and how, how can this scale, how can this become like a big, a big business? I did that and then got into phase three, which was another three months and funding, which was great. And then that kind of set me up to apply for the Enterprise Ireland PSSD fund, which is a hundred K. Um, and because I’ve, you know, done these programs, I, um, had developed the business. Cause you can’t just have an idea for a product. You really need to be thinking about how it’s going to scale. So I applied for the pre-seed fund and we got that, which was great. And the goal, the goal that Enterprise Ireland has set for that is that they want to see Irish jobs created. So in three years, I’d like to see us have 10 Irish employees and over, I think it was over a million in revenue.

Chris Barnard: And we’re very much looking forward to you hitting those numbers. That’ll be a great moment and no doubt by that phase you’ll be out of the beta that you’re in now. So what do you see those next three years being for Scopey? Where, where are you planning to go from here? It’s obviously been a really encouraging start and you’ve had some great feedback so far.

So where do you think that the project goes over the next three years, say, Jen?

Jenna Farrell: Yep. So we launched our beta version, which is now open to the public, everyone can start using it. Uh, so we launched that a few weeks ago, which is great. We’re getting good feedback. And right now we’re just working with those small to mid-size companies, uh, to refine Scopey, get all those great case studies.

And then we can really put that out as part of our go-to-market strategy and, um, get more of those types of customers. We’re also working with a few quite large, uh, agencies in the background to develop some much more, um, larger scale features that can integrate with other ERP systems. So the goal is for Scopey to become something that, obviously agencies use, but then for the larger agencies, they can manage all their scopes of work using Scopey, but then also all their contractors using Scopey. So we really see, like, the goal is to get into those networks and manage scopes going out from Scopey, coming in from Scopey, and really just be the tool for them that is used within that world.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, and I understand that you’ve got a freemium model for your pricing. Do you want to just tell our listeners a little bit about, uh, how you chose those different price points and, and what you decided should be sort of the difference in between each tier of the pricing?

Jenna Farrell: Definitely. So we want people to try it out and use it. Like, I hate nothing more than you signing up to try it out and then needing to pay. So I believe people should be able to use it straight away and see how much value it can bring. And so as we’re still in beta, the pricing is still very, um, reflects the beta.

So it’s only nine, uh, we’ve got a small team of two and only 19 per month for a team. Uh, so we’ve, the pricing will be coming up as we’ve refined the features and we’ve got some more features coming out, but it’s a great time to start testing it out. I guess the way we came to the pricing was we were comparing it to proposal software pricing and also project management software pricing. The proposal software was actually higher. So we leaned in more towards that because we are actually a sales tool more than a project management tool. So that’s kind of, uh, how we’re, how we’re looking at the pricing, but it’s something that we’re still testing with the betas and seeing where and how they get value.

Chris Barnard: Yeah. It’s such an important differentiation that you make. So I think quite naturally with that question, where does Scopey go from here? Some people will think, “Oh, I see this in my project management toolset. It’s got to fit in there quite nicely.” But I think it’s important that you’ve made that distinction.

So it’s certainly something I found on your platform that actually this is a sales aid tool, really. And it will also help us sort of make sure we’re not losing revenue. So also an efficiency tool, Jen. Is that, is that how you approach it when you think of it these days in terms of, um, if we can make it more efficient?

It’s such a process that needs this kind of efficiency, doesn’t it?

Jenna Farrell: Definitely, and, you know, time is money and project scopes take a long time to create. They can take hours. And, you know, we’ve got that down to just a few minutes. So, you know, that’s much more exciting and innovative work that somebody could be doing. So we see Scopey as being part of a business’s project ops. Tools that do everything… I don’t know. I just think that they don’t get used. I think you need to find the best tool for the job. And it’s so easy to connect tools together now. I see Scopey as being the client-facing side of project scope, selling optional services, getting approvals, then that ties into your project management, which you use a different tool for. And then obviously ties into your accounting software.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it seems to be a very cyclical approach, doesn’t it? Because there seems to be a natural move when, say, social media came onto the scene or anything like that. “Oh, I want an all-singing, all-dancing tool,” so you get the whole bundled, inefficient bundle, right? With lots of stuff you probably don’t know how to use.

And then we go through these cycles, which is sometimes a bit of a challenge. Seems to be a sort of a 10-year unpacking where actually everything goes back to specialisms. And I think you can see this with agencies as well, and maybe in some areas of professional services where everyone wanted to be the all-singing, all-dancing agency.

And then suddenly they’re just a PR agency again, or a specialist Google search agency. Your project tool seems to be able to do everything for all of those scenarios, but very specific in that this is the scope of work, and we’re getting you more money, and it’s just going to be a lot easier for you to navigate than having a bulky tool that you’re trying to use to do this.

But actually, I’ve not seen many tools do this well, Jen. That must have been part of the reason why you must know this is such a good idea.

Jenna Farrell: Yeah, exactly. Like when I was trying to use project management tools, to be honest, I think I have ADHD and I find it hard to concentrate on anything that’s too complicated. And those tools are just so feature-rich and so much going on that nobody uses them. I mean, your power users would use them, but we found that the project management tools, we would sign up to them, they look great, promised everything, but they were overly complicated for what we needed. And that was a huge part of creating Scopey. And as a UX designer as well, I know what I wanted. It just needed to be so simple, like essentially a list of, yes, I wanted to put that over here. And we’ve done it. We’ve designed it like that on purpose. So it’s powerful enough to help you sell, but it’s easy enough that you’ll actually use it and your client as well. So we also found from our research and our prototype we had last year was no matter how great the software is, a lot of your clients still aren’t going to log into it. And so that was a huge reason why we were like, “Oh, we actually had a big breakthrough moment there.” We were like, okay, it needs to work without the client even logging in. A lot of people were telling us that clients that were organisations and government-type clients needed to have PDFs to sign off. So we created Scopey to work via email and PDF. Clients can sign off scopes with an electronic signature and then it all automatically approves in Scopey. They can also choose all their optional services within that PDF and then that all automatically updates in Scopey as well. And the other great thing is that the client doesn’t need to log in and add tickets. All they need to do is send an email with all their changes—it could be conversational—and Scopey picks up all those changes and puts them in a dashboard for you. Like, it’s just, it’s just very easy, easy to use, and that’s something that we’re very, very proud of. That’s the feedback we’re getting too, which has been really exciting.

Chris Barnard: I think that’s such a thoughtful feature and I think your software does have a lot of thoughtful features. Because I think back to times when I used to run digital departments in London and often, uh, being the first millennial in on the digital team, my boss’s first job would be, “Thank goodness you are here, Chris. Here are 20 logins to all these tools that now I don’t have to log into.” Not that I was logging into them anyway, or using them in the ways they were intended to work, so it’s a great thing that you can pick up emails. I think the AI generation as well is really top in terms of being able to build out these scopes. And then, of course, you still need the manual editing there, but it’s doing a lot of the grunt work for you, isn’t it? The AI in your tool in particular, I think it really shines.

Jenna Farrell: We, I’ve seen so many AI tools that, you know, I’m like, “Oh, that looks great.” And I sign up to use it and then I start using it and I just, whatever it produces, I can’t use because it just looks too AI and too gimmicky. So we really didn’t—we wanted Scopey to work just as well without AI. That’s always been the plan, and AI should be about suggestions and just making things even faster. So we’ve made sure that people can still create their own scopes of work from scratch, but Scopey can give them suggestions and make them think about optional services or services that might happen on this project. And I think the way that the AI has worked in Scopey has come out really well and it’s something that we’re very, very proud of and proud of the tech team. Cause it looks very simple, but then there are lots of prompts in the background that are making it work like that too. And from the experience of running an agency, if Scopey gives a suggestion of a service, we’re also being very specific about what’s included in it, but also what’s not included because scope creep can happen with just one task as well. And it just starts growing uncontrollably. So using that knowledge, that 10 years of experience to prompt the AI to make sure that what we have is very, still very useful and specific for agency owners.

Chris Barnard: Whenever I see that in such a fast-paced digital world, you know, when you’re looking at someone’s LinkedIn and that’s the start of the post, you’re like, right, this is ChatGPT. It always reminds me of those terrible adverts you’d get at the cinema before your movie, you know, “In a world where…” sort of situations. So it is, it’s, it’s quite a skill in itself, isn’t it? Sort of engineering the prompts in the right way to get sort of human-type answers. And certainly the terminology is so important in scope creep, Jen, right? Like, if you get the terminology wrong, you’ll still have people who don’t put their hand up, don’t want to look stupid. Maybe it’s a junior type person as well who is more self-conscious, and actually scope creep can come from that, can’t it? Just a misunderstanding on terminology. So it is important to get the words. And I think this is another great reason for people to use your software, that the words do matter in a lot.

Scope of work, don’t they? And it’s important. I think it’s helpful for AI to sort of generate things because it might just help you with blind spots, particularly if you’re, say, more creative or you’re in those sorts of sectors where this doesn’t come naturally to you. You don’t write this type of verbiage or this sort of formal proposal. You don’t do your terms and conditions. Someone else does that for you. The terminology seems very important on this type of product. Jen, is that how you feel about it?

Jenna Farrell: Yeah, definitely. And that actually brings me into the service library and templates because you brought up a really great point about, you know, like a junior designer or a junior might not know the correct terminology. Some of the feedback we’ve had is that this is great for bringing team-wide consistency. You start building your service library of services, which means anyone has that source of truth and can start putting together a scope of work themselves. Then any scope of work that you create, you can save it as templates so anyone could open up an old template and then use that as a basis instead of starting from scratch. And it just means that more people understand your services. Cause first off, a lot of, you know, if you asked some junior or even mid-level staff members what all the services were and approximate costs, I bet they’d have no idea. So now everyone has access to that, which I think is very helpful. And it just means that people can, even if a junior was asked to answer a client about a new request, they might have that in the library from a past project. And it just means that you can keep projects moving instead of always stopping and trying to, you know, get quotes for things. You’ve got that in your service library. And I think because of that, it just speeds everything up and you’ve got your whole team on the same page.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it is so helpful. I think you’re absolutely right. It is helpful. That standardisation as well, I think, is so important for a lot of businesses because, as we sort of mentioned earlier, people are often not trained in doing things like scopes of work. Often it will be a situation of “How do you do your scopes of work here?”, right? And someone learning literally on the job, which is you get a lot of individuality in scopes of work, which actually can be painful and cause problems. Whereas actually moving to a standardised structure like this for a scope of work, I think is very helpful. Like you say, picking up the services, keeping the same consistent terminology so you’re not flicking back, saying, “Oh, how did we say this? Did we say something that has confused them? So they think it’s in scope, we think it’s out of scope.” That classic thing that you are trying to solve. Actually, having that terminology means you’re going to have more confidence when you’re pitching and talking to the client, saying, “This is actually definitely in scope ’cause we all use this system and we all know it like the back of our hand now.” And the terminology that it uses means that it was certainly there. I imagine it takes away some of those awkward conversations that are naturally part of a scope creep conversation, right?

Jenna Farrell: Definitely. And that’s the thing, I think, with the traditional method, um, people just put a blanket percentage for contingency. So, what we encourage with Scopey is to actually not just say, “Oh, 10 to 15 percent for contingency.” Actually, you know, value and say what the risks and other things that come up might be and put a value on that. And because you’re starting to, you know, document all of this, you can learn from past projects and you’ll know what those things might be for this project. So I think that in itself will help prevent a lot of scope creep on projects as well.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, your point on contingency is such a good one because, of course, in so many sectors, contingency is naturally there. It’s for things that couldn’t be foreseen. And in a lot of ways, it’s always good planning to have contingency. The digital world, we still seem to be a bit scared of it, scared to talk about it. Clients always sort of raise the furrowed brow and sort of say, “Oh, what’s this? You know, we’ve not kind of budgeted for this.” Um, you know, there are no line items against it again. That’s probably culturally just something we need to get better at as a business community, Jen, right? That actually contingency, again, is a very natural thing. Um, it’s something that, as you quite rightly say, we need to get better at sort of saying what those contingency things might be instead of just saying, right, blanket 10 percent, right, actually nailing it down. Yeah.

Jenna Farrell: Yeah, exactly. And that’s why your client’s coming to you because you’re the expert. So we should know what those things are.

Chris Barnard: And my great contingency, of course, as part of this podcast is asking you what your favourite game is, which you’ll know from other podcasts of the Bear Business that we do. My little extra 10 percent on the side is to find out what people’s games are, because I think it’s so revealing, fascinating what people like.

What would you say your favourite game is, Jen? Is there a game you particularly like to play?

Jenna Farrell: Well, I actually have a new game I like to play since moving to Ireland. When I moved here, I got asked to join the Mothers and Others Gaelic football team. I started playing Gaelic football, which is a game. Very fun and very full-on. Um, can’t say I was very good at kicking goals or being very accurate with that, but because I’m tall and have long arms, I’m always good at defence and getting in the way of the ball. So you’ll see me at the back of the field.

Chris Barnard: Do you have family, family still in New Zealand? Do you tell them about it? Are they like, “Oh, I quite like this Gaelic football.” Have you piqued the interest? Are there going to be more New Zealand Gaelic football players now?

Jenna Farrell: Well, yeah. So all my family are in New Zealand, but funnily enough, it’s very similar to Aussie rules, which obviously everyone loves back in Melbourne, and I think a lot of Irish players actually go to Australia to play Aussie rules. But I think the difference in Gaelic is that there’s just a bit more, like, I don’t know, the Irish like to throw in a few extra skill sets. So you’ve got to run and solo the ball. So run and bounce it on your foot and then bounce it every four steps. So, yeah, there’s a lot to it. It takes a while to get used to, but it’s definitely a lot of fun.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, if you’re a viewer who hasn’t watched any Gaelic football, I think now is the time to go and introduce yourself on YouTube as it’s kind of an amalgamation of rugby, basketball, football, really, isn’t it? So, uh, it’s certainly going to keep you interested, and you need to have lots of skills to play it.

Um, but thank you very much, Jen. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you today about Scopey. I think the listeners now have such a great idea of how they can use this in their tech stack into their project ops. Um, and what we’ll do is, in the show notes, we’ll put a link to your website and also to your social media so they can ask you some questions. So thank you very much for being with us today, Jen.

Jenna Farrell: Thanks for having me, Chris. Really enjoyed it.