“AgencyAgile’s Digital Marketing Roundtable, “Causes and Impacts of Poor Scoping and Estimation” was a great webinar that many of my team attended. By highlighting the systemic impacts of poor scoping and bad estimating, it is pretty clear that agencies need to make better investments in scope understanding and client alignment at the beginning of a project to avoid loosing money, delivering less than was promised to our clients, and burning out our teams in the process.

AgencyAgile brought both new perspectives to a ubiquitous problem most agencies face, and provided actionable insights—things we can start to work on right away.

They are on a mission to bring out all of the skeletons in our collective closets (digital agencies) and help us address the real issues behind the business/operations challenges we face.”  – Rebecca Flavin, CEO, Effective UI

Visit this Adobe Connect link to watch a replay of the Digital Marketing Roundtable webinar, hosted by SoDA and broadcast from R&R Partners in Los Angeles on April 9, 2014.  57 minutes in length.

Description

One of the most difficult challenges that agencies face today is that of scoping and estimating new projects effectively and accurately. The most prevalent practices are borrowed from software development or traditional advertising organizations and are poorly suited for today’s complex and rapid-moving integrated agency.  Studies have indicated that agency-wide margin losses from poor scoping and estimating can be as high as 15% of sales and that many of the causes are systemic, and not at all obvious.

Topics include:

  • The many causes of poor scoping and estimation, as well as delving into the actual costs and impacts.
  • We’ll explore its impact from many perspectives, including client relationships, project success, agency capacity utilization, worker retention and burnout, organization structure and bottom-line impact.
  • Participants will come away with a better understanding of the many causes of poor scoping and estimation, as well as its impact across the whole agency.
  • Best practices will also be shared along with the many poor practices that exist today.