Scope Change Costing Procedure (Delivery)

Scope Change Costing Procedure (Delivery)

1. 01

   Log the change request in the roadmap tool the moment the client raises it

   Capture requester, date, and the exact wording of the ask. A request that lives only in a call recording cannot be priced or defended later.

2. 02

   Tag the request against the current committed milestone before estimating anything

   Map it to the feature or deliverable it touches so the trade-off is visible. ProdPad's Now-Next-Later framing is useful here because it forces the question of what moves out of Now.

3. 03

   Estimate effort in the same units the retainer already uses

   If the contract bills in sprint capacity, express the change in sprint days. If it bills in hours, express it in hours. Mixing units is how margin quietly disappears.

4. 04

   Identify what gets displaced, not just what gets added

   Every insertion pushes something later. Name the specific item that slips and by how many days, then put that sentence in writing to the client.

5. 05

   Price the change against the original scope baseline

   Pull the baseline from the roadmap export at contract signature. ProductPlan and airfocus both support saved views that make this comparison a two-minute exercise rather than a re-forecast.

6. 06

   Present the trade-off as a choice with two priced options

   Option A extends the timeline at no extra fee. Option B holds the date and adds a change order. Clients pick faster when both paths carry a visible cost.

7. 07

   Record the client decision and update the shared roadmap within one business day

   A decision that is not reflected in the roadmap within 24 hours will be re-litigated in the next status call. Timestamp the update so the audit trail is clean.

8. 08

   Review accumulated change orders at each monthly retainer checkpoint

   Three or more approved changes in a month signals the original scope was underspecified. That pattern is a re-scoping conversation, not a billing conversation.