As I’ve heard from fellow web designers who’s been in the game longer than I have, who own agencies and established. Towards the year’s end is the busiest time for web designers as business owners tend to look back on what they have done throughout the year and reflect. Some would look to revamp the existing website or decide to launch a new one.

This turned out to be quite true for me this year which is also the 1st “official” year that I pursued this career full-time.

Many leads and prospects reached out asking for quotations. This allows me to schedule some of them for next year to space things out and lighten up the load.

I haven’t had a vacation this year. Outside of project work, I’ve been rotating between online courses from design to business, sales, and client management. I even signed up for Jiu-jitsu practice to maintain my physical well-being which I love and invest my time into.

My sleeping and other habits are also out of whack as I want to spend more time in the evening relaxing and talking with my girlfriend.

Things are picking up speed and quite hard to manage everything. It’s a bit scary but also very exciting. Wouldn’t it be nice if the clients just manage themselves to my business needs haha.
It’s like a roller coaster slowly going up the ramp and about to make a dive. It’s terrifying but also exciting. Let’s see where this takes me!

If you ever work with a client on a project, scope creep is one of the things that is bound to happen sooner or later, the client asked if we can add another feature onto the website, another bullet in the list of deliverables, another idea that the client came up with that might make you spend the whole weekend researching on how to fit it in the current project.

I’ve been in that situation before, and as a fellow people pleaser who doesn’t want to say no, I always say yes to those requests only to resent myself while working on it, and just between you and me, I also secretly love the challenge as well as the enjoyment of solving problems but deep down I know that this isn’t sustainable and something has to change, I cannot just say “yes” to scope-creep because the following things will start to happens:

• What is this “thing”? We will lose sight of the project, and the initial purpose of why the project was created in the first place.
• “So… when will we launch?”: the project will take longer to design, develop, and test. To postpone the launch date could affect both your and your client’s finances and plans.
• When will it end? everything will keep snowballing if you accept every request and demand from the client, the moment when you start to say “no” will cause a “crack” in the relationship with your client.

How do you get ahead of scope creep? Is it the client’s fault that you have to spend extra hours in front of your computer working?
I would say that it’s hardly the client’s fault since it’s very common to have an idea, a lightbulb moment during the project that they think can have a positive impact on the business with you saying yes they either think that: this must be easy enough to change or you’re a pushover who will agree to everything they say. Either of those is hardly true (well, maybe the latter is sometimes true). The way I deal with scope creep now is to have a system, the difference between the pros and amateur is the pro has a system:

• List out the detailed timeline and deliverables (scope of work): having things written down in an agreement and contract is a great first step for both you and a client to get on the same page, understanding what’s the project about, when and how it will be delivered
• Set expectations and boundaries before work: let the client know that you are a professional who is focused and works with a system, not a tool that the client can use and push around, you have spent years and resources to get where you are now, the client should respect your craft as you should too.
• Invite the client into the process, and work them through on how and why you make a decision -> this will eliminate impulsive, unthoughtful decisions from the clients.
• Always reflect and compare the project progress in each milestone with the agreed-upon scope of work and the project’s goals.
• If there’s a much-needed scope change, take a deep breath, stand firm, and let them know there will be budget and/or timeline implications or this will be a different project after this current project is finished and achieved its goals.

I’m starting to try out messaging businesses in my city and realize that most (if not all) my message or email will not be replied. It’s good to keep in mind that the point of client outreach is to get all of the client but finding the right one! The same one goes for when you are sending your portfolio to multiple company applying for a job or even dating.

Getting the word out is easy to measure and exciting as well.

Focusing on this misses the point.

You might be able to get a song played on the radio, but will the song motivate listeners to show up at the concert?

The math is simple: You can’t build a freelance career or a restaurant or a medical practice on one-time interactions. Charities that fundraise a few dollars at a time, door to door, pitching strangers… they have a rough road.

The hype and the tension and the promo work for a while, but they aren’t sustainable.

Which means, “this might not be for you,” isn’t a problem, it’s a feature.

We’re not looking for everyone, we’re looking for someone.

…

Seth Godin

Toward Stickiness by Seth Godin:

Business analyst is a job that usually posted on job board and hired by tech company. What business analyst do is to… well… analyse a business and suggest solution that can solve their painpoints or improve an area of that business.

To put this in example, let’s say you are running a dance academy that offer dance courses every 2 months for people to sign up, your target audience is from 18-28 years old so you mostly do your marketing on social media, which is working great, you use google form for student to sign up.

The business analyst can look at that and can see that there are painpoints that needs to address and opportunities for business to grow, the good thing that the business are doing and able to capitalize:

• Hard to show detail about the courses and the instructors -> this leads to reduce in sign ups and conversions.
• Employee might have a hard time to keep track, response to message, deal with repeating questions from students.
• Student don’t have a good overview of the course.
• Marketing bottleeneck, limited by social media and offline present only.
• Poor presentation of the school if only on social media.

The analysis could go even further with statistic, study, research and spreadsheet, from there, the business analyst will have some suggestion to improve such as: having a website that built for dance academy with the specific functions such as: an archive of all the classes and categorized them by statuses of upcoming, finished and ongoing, having pages of teachers and facility images of the academy, connect signup form with email for easier signup and manage between staffs,…

The list goes on and on, so let’s bring it back to why tech companies are more likely to hire a business analyst. Business analysts need to study not just the client business but the services/products of the company that they are working for and connect the two together, they will be the bridge between clients and the company by seeing and suggest how the company product can help with the client busines. It could be an app, a service, a website, a design, a product, a system, a framework.

Some industries like banking, ecommerce, politics are in dire needs of business analyst as their existing system is complex in itself and very resistant to changes, yet the customer and technology keep evolving.

When I was working in a tech company, I used to think that business analysts is a bit redundant as the owner or the developer already has the idea of the existing problem. But this might be wrong as the owner’s view or the developer’s view might not be aligned with the customers. The owner might be thinking too much about budget or what he think may be best for his customers, while the developers might be thinking too much about the technical stuff and forgot what’s the main goal of what they are building.

As a freelancer, I realize that it is way harder than it looks, just the client communication alone is hard in itself, to tell a business owner that they have a problem and your product is how they can improve takes listening skill, analytic skill and problem solving skill and later on communicate that to the dev team, and company that you are working for also takes a lot of communication skill.

Do you think you need a business analyst for you business?