Can “Peopling Skills” Help Manage Evaluation Scope Creep?

Let’s revisit evaluation scope creep – meaning a project growing out of the evaluator’s control.

This post expands on a 2019 EvaluATE webinar and an earlier post here about the importance of distinctions among an evaluation’s contract, work scope, and study protocol. Those resources present documentation practices that can serve as a foundation for the work discussed here.

In this post, I share ideas about how peopling skills—my favorite term for relationship-management strategies—can help head off creep in our work.

How does peopling work in evaluation? By attending to boundaries, change processes, and communication.

Maintaining Boundaries

• Prearrange touchpoints to review progress. Reach out to the client regularly, even if they don’t respond, to make clear your commitment to the scope and timeline.
• Define contextual boundaries for the evaluand. Be clear about the frame within which the evaluand exists (e.g., number of sites) and within which the evaluation is executed.
• Clarify key things the evaluation will not include. Anticipate where creep might occur, and note from the outset anything you are not doing that might be desired later but is out of scope (e.g., not writing individual site-level reports).
• Track all time spent on the project. Start any conversation about additional or different work bargaining from a position of strength, knowing how much time has been burned, what activities have been done, and what remains to be done.
• Don’t “fall in love” with your clients. It’s easy to become invested in a client’s work, particularly if you really believe in it; maintain emotional distance sufficient to preserve your financial interests.

Managing Change Processes

• Stand fast on the principle that you are a professional. Be ready to explain that if you go broke doing evaluation work, you won’t be around to help clients in the future.
• Predict common traps to help avoid them. Some activities are more likely to slip out of control (e.g., getting data from big institutions), so plan for contingencies—alternate measures or data sources—so you’re ready when common issues arise.
• Anticipate opportunities to negotiate trade-offs. Think in advance about how deliverables like reporting might be changed to accommodate shifting needs or budgets.
• Actively track how the evaluand is changing. When a project manager announces that something will be different, try to anticipate implications for the evaluation before the client asks for changes.

Communicating Effectively

• Be clear about terms and definitions from the outset. Create a glossary to help avoid issues resulting from confusing communication.
• Develop the vocabulary to talk about money. Unless you’re doing evaluation as a hobby, understanding key terms (e.g., price vs. cost vs. profit) is necessary to communicate confidently with clients about scope changes.
• Document communication. Have a formal change request process, detail modifications in writing (“Following up on today’s call…”), keep living versions of documents, and maintain communication logs so issues can be resolved.
• Use “Yes, if we…” language. When a client asks for additional work, make clear that you can accommodate changes but that it will always be about moving hours among tasks (e.g., fewer focus groups to add a site visit), rather than adding time for free.
• Be ready to ask for more money. If changes can’t be accommodated in the budget, propose a bigger one. The client might say yes.