How are projects scoped for effective working hours?

How are projects scoped for effective working hours?

Our project managers (admins) scope each task individually. We use certain standard hour estimates for each type of task - see the screenshot below that shows the value of each task per 1 slide. Whenever a slide is more or less complex the admins adjust the value so the hour scope is fair to both the designer and the client. That means that the task is not over-scoped (unfair to the client) but also not under-scoped (unfair to the designer)

Minimum 1-hour scope

To support our designers and to make the work more sustainable we set the minimum effective working 1 hour as a standard. That means that even if you work only on 1 Brush-up slide that takes only 0.4 hours, you will be paid 1 hour - as that is the minimum we give to the designers.

WARNING: 1-hour minimum does not apply for Quick Quality Assurance tasks that are lowered by 20% due to the lower amount of admin reviews and edits. Therefore, for QQA tasks the minimum time is 0.8 hours.
PLEASE NOTE: Sometimes it can happen that the designer is working, for example, only on 1 Brush-up slide and the client sends another Brush-up slide to work on. Our admins might add this slide to your current task and ask you to work on it. Since the task is already scoped for 1 hour, due to our minimum standard, the admins will not increase your working hours because the standard Brush up for 1 slide is 0.4 hours. That means that 2 Brush up slides are still just 0.8 hours, so the scope for the task already covers work on both slides due to the 1-hour minimum. The admins will only adjust the scope if the work exceeds the 1-hour scope.

Scope of repeated slides

Repeated slides are slides that have similar or identical structures and do not need too many edits in comparison to each other, mostly just replacement of content. Therefore these slides are scoped with slightly less time since they require less effort. The first slide that needs to be built from scratch is considered an original slide and gets the full scope. All the other slides that have the same/similar structures are scoped as repeated slides.
Example of repeated slides marked in a task description:

What to do if you think your project is not scoped correctly for the estimated working hours?

Rarely it might happen that the admins miscalculated the hourly scope. On some occasions the time a task might take can be quite complex and rather hard to judge the number of hours it will require. Our admins are very open to discussing these cases, and sometimes they even bring up this issue upfront and inform designers that they scoped the project for x amount of hours, but in case the work will take longer than estimated they will adjust the scope accordingly (within reason)
If you notice some issue with the task scope feel free to bring it up to the admin so they can re-check the scope and update the task if needed.

PLEASE NOTE: Whenever it comes to the admins attention that the hours on the project were not sufficient and it is a valid case they will update the time.

Admins cannot update the time due to reasons such as:
Slow speed of a designer due to lack of experience or skills - our scope is based on the average speed of our designers and we can´t adjust the time for slower, learning designers
Working longer due to reworks caused by not paying attention to the guidelines, instructions or admins´ feedback
Creating a simple option for a client that is based on copy-pasting the original slide and adjusting some small aspects of the slide to cover some doubts about the slide (option might help the client to choose the correct slide with some smaller but substantial difference: fx highlight, the position of some point in a timeline, or any other similar case)
"Trying your luck" - maybe if I ask the admin they will give me more time
Other invalid reasons that are not based on our standard scoping methods

Updated on: 23/01/2023