Managing client expectations and feedback while keeping a software project on time and on budget is a challenge most project managers face.

In this guide we’ll discuss ways you can educate your clients about the Agile software development process to better manage their participation in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). 

We’ll also look at how using a Product Requirements Document (PRD) can help you manage client expectations and keep everyone on the same page while keeping your project on track.

The cost of scope creep and miscommunication

Even with the flexibility an Agile approach brings to your software development project, the cost of changes still increases as you get farther along in your project. The later a bug is found or the more time has passed when a requirement changes, the more expensive it will be for the team to fix. That’s why it’s important to dedicate focused time to requirements gathering and educating your clients about the importance of accurately capturing their desired outcomes. 

If clients aren’t familiar with Agile software development they might not realize that unclear requirements will delay or increase the cost of their project later. Or if they know a little about Agile they might think the agility means they can make changes whenever they want and the project will adapt without changing the timeline or budget. 

Project managers must work with their clients to make sure they understand the high level software development process and continue to guide them throughout the project. After all, to do Agile well takes years of experience and continuous learning.

Other hidden costs

Beyond financial costs, frequent changes can have additional costly impacts to a project that you may need to educate your clients about. Mid-project change requests can cause a strain on resource allocations as teams scramble to meet customer demands without extending their deadline or going over budget. This can increase stress on the team and reduce morale, which may affect the quality of work and further delay progress.

If changes are deemed necessary and of high enough priority the project timeline may need to be extended, impacting other projects the team has committed to in the future. Even if additional budget is available, bringing new people onto a project will slow down work before you see increased efficiency from new resources as current team members must take time away from their tasks to onboard and educate their new teammates.

Finally, a large number of mid-project changes can dilute the original project vision. Bringing on new people that may not have time to fully grasp the goals of the project leads to a product that doesn’t meet initial goals. If timelines are constrained by new work, quality assurance measures may be rushed or cut, leading to a product that doesn’t meet the desired quality standards.

Educating Clients on Agile Software Development

Now that you have a better understanding of the cost of scope creep in Agile projects, how can you educate your clients to better manage their expectations? You can start by giving them an overview of how the Agile software development process works and where, ideally, they participate in it.

Introduce the Agile Framework

Teach your clients about the project backlog and how:

  • Epics group large areas of functionality.
  • User stories capture specific workflows and user goals.
  • Features and tasks break down those stories into actionable development work.

Involve Clients in User Story Definition

Include clients when defining user stories to ensure you are capturing their workflows accurately. Some clients will also want to review feature definitions to understand how they will use a feature in greater detail. Including motivated users in each phase of design can help ensure that the requirements you document closely match user expectations and should prevent misalignments and future rework.

Explain Sprint Planning and Workflow

Educate clients on:

  • How work moves from backlog to definition, development, testing, and release.
  • The importance of their input during planning and design phases to keep the project on track.
  • Their potential role in user acceptance testing (UAT) or release reviews.

Make sure clients know what kind of time commitment is expected to review and validate the product before it’s released.

Set Clear Involvement Expectations

Clarify upfront:

  • When clients will be involved.
  • To what degree they’ll participate.
  • Why their involvement matters.

Document these expectations in your project plan. Refer back to them if confusion arises. A clear understanding of their role empowers clients and encourages greater investment in the project’s success.

Managing client expectations to prevent scope creep

Of course, even with clear expectations, there will always be adjustments that need to be made as a project progresses.

Many businesses operate in environments that can change quickly, and teams must adapt their software to stay relevant. And sometimes, customers don’t have a solid idea of what they need their final project to be and are inspired during the development phase with new feature ideas.

In all of these cases, it will be up to the project manager to set clear boundaries and manage client expectations to avoid scope creep.

Establish Boundaries With a Change Control Process

As part of your process definition and early project discussions, you should agree on a change control process. This should include documentation on how mid-sprint requests will be handled.

For non-urgent requests, they should go into the backlog and be worked into a future sprint during sprint planning. You should talk with clients about the impact to the overall schedule and budget and decide if you need to remove a lower priority item from the backlog to balance out the new request.

Build In Flexibility for Urgent Needs

A well-defined support process is a must for urgent requests — particularly if you are working on a product that is already live in production.

When a feature is not working as expected or a new feature is needed quickly, a sprint may need to be interrupted. Ideally, you’re setting some time aside each sprint for bug fixes and other support tasks, but sometimes unexpected circumstances require a deviation from the plan.

In those cases, keeping open lines of communication with your client and engineering team is critical so everyone understands when work is being postponed and any other tradeoffs that need to be made.

A post-mortem should also be conducted to examine why the request or issue wasn’t identified earlier in the process and what can be done differently to avoid similar disruptions in the future.

Using a Product Requirements Document to prevent scope creep

We’ve mentioned a few times the need to document your process and plans so that you can use those documents to educate your clients and refer back to them when decisions need to be made — but how should you document them?

A Product Requirements Document (PRD) is an effective way to capture critical project information in a central location that all stakeholders can access.

Start With the Product Vision

The beginning of the PRD outlines high level product goals and boundaries that can be used to evaluate if future changes fall within the product’s overall goals.

Sometimes the product vision will be in a different document, but it’s a good idea to start the PRD with a summary of the vision statement to help frame the rest of the document.

Define the Scope (Especially What’s Out of Scope)

Next, you need to define the scope of the product.

In particular, you should clearly articulate and document what is out of scope. This information can make it easier to say ‘no’ in the future if a change request clearly falls out of scope for the current product.

The more defined your product’s boundaries are, the more obvious scope creep will be to recognize and curtail.

Align on Objectives, Then Break Them Into Requirements

Once your stakeholders understand the vision and scope, you can begin the discussions about what the product does.

Teams often start by defining the business needs in terms of objectives. Objectives are then further broken down into requirements — what features or functionality is necessary to achieve the objective?

As you build the list of requirements, stakeholders list an initial priority for how important or critical that requirement is to the objective. This will help you later with planning and engineering prioritization.

Don’t Forget Technical and Cross-Cutting Requirements

Be sure to include requirements related to features such as:

  • Reporting
  • Auditing
  • Security and data handling
  • Storage
  • Compliance

Your clients may not be aware of the amount of “extra” work that must be done to make a robust, secure, and compliant product.

Having everything documented in the PRD gives them visibility into the underlying requirements that support their feature requests.

Define Success Criteria Up Front

Finally, your PRD should define success criteria for each requirement.

It’s important for teams to know what constitutes “done” for each feature and where “good enough” is acceptable. Otherwise, they may continue working well over your budget and timeline attempting to finish every last detail and make the product perfect.

This is also a great place to emphasize cross-functional requirements and features that have dependencies on one another. Success criteria should include these related items working together well for the intended outcome.

For an in-depth look at product requirements and related documentation, check out Clear Project Requirements on the Project Management Institute’s website.

Creating a PRD Template in Assembla

Assembla’s Wiki tool makes it simple to create and manage PRDs. You can organize content with custom URLs, reorder pages, and collaborate using @Mentions. With User Roles, invite clients as Watchers and optionally allow them to submit Tickets.

The Wiki integrates with Tickets across Spaces, making it easy to link requirements to engineering work. Wiki Templates help standardize documentation—just copy your PRD template page to create consistent, ready-to-use requirement pages.

To help you get started, we’ve created a public PRD template on Assembla that you can explore and use as a starting point. You’re welcome to copy and paste the content into your own Spaces and customize it to fit your team’s needs.

The template includes suggested sections and formatting based on the Mastering Project Requirements conference paper by Michele Maritato.

View the PRD Template and start building your own.

Start Using Agile Project Management with Assembla

Assembla has tools to help your team plan, track, develop, test, and release your features while adapting to change and customer feedback. Clients can be included in all stages of the project and have visibility into project plans and reports. You can leverage the Wiki Tool to document requirements in a PRD and collaborate with clients and internal stakeholders.

As you move into engineering planning, Assembla offers flexible backlog management tools, including cardwalls and task boards, to assist your teams in creating, updating, and visualizing your feature list. Our task management system can quickly create tickets for bugs and our repo integration updates ticket status instantly from Git, Perforce and Subversion code commits.

If you’re ready to try cloud-based Agile development, start a free 14 day trial of Assembla. Our team would also love to talk with you about how Assembla can meet your Agile software development needs.