How To Scope A Project - Learn Taylor Swift's Tricks

"I laid the groundwork, and then just like clockwork

The dominoes cascaded in a line"

—Mastermind, Taylor Swift

Chances are, you’re someone who’s guilty of an unexpectedly large shopping trip or a project that somehow ballooned beyond the initial requirements. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), a whopping 52% of projects experience the dreaded scope creep.

You don’t have infinite team members, time, and money. And, if your project requirements continue to expand, your resources are going to be strapped.  

Taylor Swift has become a case study for various business strategies, including marketing projects. While her marketing project strategy seems to be doing well, one cannot help but wonder what the project scope is and what are the elements that Swift considers crucial. To market a strategy, after all, you have to first create a project scope.  

"Strategy sets the scene for the tale", sings Taylor Swift in her song Mastermind. While the song may pan out on the love vignette, she often puts around her song, it greatly reflects on how Time's Person of the Year 2023 strategizes the sales for her album.  

The Mastermind

You do not have to be Taylor Swift fan, a Swift fan, to admire her dedication and hard work. 2024's Grammy winner for the Best Album category, Swift earned $137.5 million following her album Midnights.  

In 2023, The Eras Tour was sensational. Swift performed songs from different albums, including Midnights, Evermore, Folklore, 1988, Reputation, Red, Speak Now, and Fearless. Her success? The show brings in 13 million dollars every single time.  

Swift also rerecorded six of her earlier albums, an act being hailed as 'unprecedented in its scope'. Each re-recorded album mentioned 'Taylor's Version' to  

As Swift claims in her song Mastermind, 'none of this was accidental.'

The success of her sister albums, evermore and folklore,

Project Scope Statement: Taylor's Version

When it comes to project scoping, not all of us have the luxury of 141 million Instagram followers to whom we can spontaneously announce news. Nonetheless, when it comes to scoping a project, one can learn a lot from America's Sweetheart, who continues to remain relevant in the pop music industry.  

What is it that Taylor Swift is doing right? Certainly, what we see on the screen is not accidental success. Your luck can only strike so many times. Right? Right.  

When you take a look at Swift's successful career, connecting the dots is not easy. She is a businesswoman with a goal. Here are a few things that stand out in terms of project scope:

1. Clear Objective: She Is A Storyteller

Love Story was charting Billboard's Top 100 in 2009. You could not have missed it. It played everywhere. What made the song special was its cross-genre potential, merging country style with pop music. It told a story with catchy tunes and chord progressions.  

One could not help but continue to listen. Dear Reader, her story telling has remained the center of Taylor Swift as a brand. Throughout her albums, as she sings about love, jealousy, friendships, reputations, or the experience of growing up, you can see that she has only strengthened into her role as a singer who can tell you a story.

In fact, while weighing in for The Harvard Gazette, Stephanie Burt, a poet, claims that her song writing has the ability to ‘make you spin stories’ of your own. As a result, Swift's songs help people articulate their own experiences. Due to the diversity of the stories, she can tell through her music, she continues to remain relevant to various demographics, including young people and those who are growing old.  

Now that the world hails her as a great poet with awareness of her skills as ‘a songwriter, both at the macro level, how the song tells a story or presents an attitude, and at the micro level, how the vowels and consonants fit together’. While accepting her Grammy, she dropped the release date of her upcoming album: The Tortured Poets Department.  

Once again, after being hailed as the best song writer on social media especially since folklore and evermore, and eventually Midnights. University of Florida is offering a course titled 'Musical Story Telling with Taylor Swift and other iconic female artists'.

This further shows that as a songwriter, she is offering poems and stories which can be studied inside classrooms due to their relevancy to our immediate lives.

What Have We Learned?

Taylor Swift's marketing strategies are driven by clear project objectives. Beyond the need to create good music is her goal to share stories with the world. Her sustained brand image reflects her goal. This aligns with the first step in project scoping, which involves defining clear goals and objectives for the project.

2. Project Stakeholders: The Queen Of Gen Y And Z

For a performer, their audience decides the stakes and you must keep them reeled in. Taylor Swift's connection with her fans is a power that she harnesses. She was a hit among millennials but during COVID-19, she earned a very special place with Gen-Z. On TikTok, many of her songs went viral.  

One way that she stayed in touch with her audience is through social media platforms like Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. She also started posting on TikTok before the release of her album Midnights. She engaged her audience by dropping Easter Eggs to find out release dates, upcoming events, and more.  

What Have We Learned?

You need to identify stakeholders and understand their needs and expectations. Real-time data and analytics can help you understand who the real stakeholders are and what they expect from you. While crafting your project scope document, dedicate time to understanding the driving factors, worries, and preferences of suppliers, clients, and peers.

3. Careful Collaboration: ft. More Lana  

Taylor Swift does not have many feathers in her hat when it comes to collaborative music. However, she does not shy away from harboring the skills of other artists. It is obvious that she is very picky when it comes to working with others. However, in her Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition) release, she added Snow On the Beach with more singing parts for Lana Del Rey. On the other hand, the rising star Ice Spice was featured in Karma.

In both cases, her selection is strategic. One song takes the melodic sound of Del Rey, whereas the other one relies on the young and sassy Ice Spice's shoulders.  

What Have We Learned?

Assess all the collaborative tasks and define who to reach out to. You need a comprehensive list of all the resources, clients, and collaborators who will add value to your project.  

4. Project Budget: Money Makes The World Go Round

One simply cannot afford to be impulsive with their spending habits when it comes to a project like the Eras Tour. You cannot make financial decisions that are not accurately linked to your project's scope.  

It is impossible to imagine what the total budget is when one starts to count each element involved in the concert; the outfits, the venues, the sets, the catwalk ramp, the legion of dancers, the stylists, and more.  

David Brooks, the Billboard Senior Director of Live Music and Touring, anticipated that the cost must exceed $100 million per show. The scale of this tour also probably required project planning for logistics and travel expenses, including transportation for the artist and their crew, accommodation, catering, and venue rentals. Swift's tours often span multiple cities and countries, necessitating careful budgeting to manage travel costs effectively.

What Have We Learned?

With a project as massive and multifaceted as the Eras Tour, it's crucial to ensure that every expenditure contributes directly to the tour's objectives and delivers value to both the artist and the audience. Likewise, when you are defining the scope of a project, you need to assess your budget for each aspect to manage any cost spillage.

5. Defining Time: Never Miss The Beat

Taylor Swift is on a roll. She has not managed to break her streak of releasing music, going on tours, receiving awards, and increasing her net worth. None of this would be possible if she did not include the power of time in her project plan.  

Taylor Swift effectively used the element of surprise as her primary publicity strategy for her new albums in 2020. She stirred excitement and intrigue by launching two albums without any prior notice. Staying true to her style, she took to social media to announce the release of Folklore on the very night it was launched.

During the Eras Tour, when her album was already the second most streamed album on Spotify, she released the re-recorded albums. Now, during her Grammy acceptance speech, she announced her upcoming album. You can follow the sequence of these events. In the past three or four years, Taylor Swift has consistently relied on calculated timing to introduce her latest venture.  

What Have We Learned?

You need to define time for your project to ensure that you are taking all the crucial steps at the right time. For project managers, it is even more important that they define the scope statement with time breakdown. This will give your team members a better idea about which tasks need to be completed and at what time.  

By carefully planning her release schedule and coordinating with her team, Swift ensures that deliverables are launched at opportune moments to maximize impact and reach. This attention to timing mirrors the project scoping practice of setting deadlines and timelines for deliverables.

6. Project Deliverables: Do Not Deviate

‘Midnights (3 am edition)’ was launched just three hours after the release of her ‘Midnights’ album, right at, as one might expect, 3 am.

The ‘3 am tracks’ were brilliant not only for their clear links to the album titles but also because they essentially encouraged devoted fans to stay awake for an additional three hours. And what were they doing in those three hours? Obviously, enjoying ‘Midnights’  

If anyone missed the midnight announcement, Swift thoughtfully teased about an early morning ‘unpredictable surprise’ during promotional activities and TV appearances prior to the launch of Midnights.

What Have We Learned?

Taylor Swift is going to deliver as her project deliverables are quite apparent to her audience. The Midnights (3 am edition) release demonstrates the significance of precise timing in project deliverables. By releasing the edition at 3 am, Swift was able to capitalize on the anticipation built from the earlier release of the 'Midnights' album. This highlights how strategic scheduling can maximize the impact of project deliverables.

'None Of It Was Accidental': Project Life Cycle

To summarize, Taylor Swift's business model is very calculated. Each move she makes is curated to feed into the next one until the entire project is successfully executed. It is quite true of Swift when she sings ‘it was all my design’.

Why Is Project Scope Management Important?

Remember, your resources, such as team members, time, and budget, are not infinite. If your project requirements continue to grow, these resources will inevitably be stretched thin.

Effective management of project scope helps you stick as closely as possible to your initial plan and manage your resources more efficiently, leading to the following benefits.

Feasible Timelines

A study by PwC involving over 10,600 projects showed that only 2.5% of companies successfully complete their projects without any issues. The rest exceed their initial budget or deadline (or both).

Proper project scope management can prevent you and your team from overshooting your original completion date. When you have a clear understanding of what is required to finish a project, it is much easier to set a feasible deadline that can actually be met.

Precise Budgeting

Determining the cost of a project can be challenging if its requirements and deliverables are in a constant state of flux. Just like setting aside a budget for your library trip, establishing the scope helps you set a realistic budget from the outset.

Monitoring the scope as your team progresses helps you adhere to that budget, ensuring you don't overspend on late fees or extra books you didn't plan on borrowing.

Streamlined Projects

We've all experienced it. A simple library visit turns into a marathon because you keep finding new books, references, or sections you want to explore. The scope keeps broadening, and the visit stretches on and on.

While it's satisfying to say 'yes' to more books, library-goers often continue to agree to borrow more without realizing how far they've deviated from their initial list.

Defining and managing your library visit (or project scope) allows you to complete your visit efficiently according to the original plan rather than letting it continue to inflate.

In simpler terms, your scope (and the corresponding project scope statement you construct) guides your project. It's a reference that the project manager and team can revisit and use to steer their project-related decisions.

Traditional Methods To Define Project Scope

You can simplify the process by implementing some important steps. Let's get to them:

1. Define Project Goals And Targets

The first step in outlining the project scope is to lay down the foundational elements - the project goals and targets. These form the basis for the project scope. It's important to remember that goals and targets are distinct, with goals being broader and targets being more detailed and specific.

Other Tips:

Involve all stakeholders in the process of setting project goals and targets, as each person can offer a unique viewpoint and provide insights into potential pitfalls that might otherwise be overlooked

Adhere to the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) criteria when outlining the project targets

Maintain flexibility with the project goal, as it may evolve over time. As long as changes do not impact the schedule, budget or resource needs, accommodating these alterations can enhance client satisfaction

2. Identify Potential Obstacles And Pitfalls

During previous discussions, you may have identified certain areas that could potentially disrupt the entire project. Some might inflate the budget, extend deadlines, or compromise quality. It's crucial to recognize such potential obstacles and analyze their impact to ensure readiness for such occurrences.

Other Tips:

• Again, engage all stakeholders to compile a thorough list of possible issues that could arise during any phase of project execution
• Document every conceivable problem that could disrupt the entire project cycle. Where feasible, attempt to quantify its impact
• Formulate a contingency plan for the identified problems to minimize or manage their effects, particularly when there are dependencies involved

3. Always Include Additional Project Requirements

At this point, you might have recognized some project requirements that weren't evident during the initial planning stages. If these are closely linked to your project targets, budget, resources, and deliverables, they need to be considered and incorporated into your project scope statement.

Other Tips:

• Only include those project requirements, both functional and non-functional, that have a direct impact on the main project parameters
• Utilize project requirement-gathering methods such as brainstorming, nominal group technique, Delphi technique, and context diagrams to uncover hidden requirements
• Identify project tasks that are required along the way  
• Prioritize additional requirements to prevent scope creep

4. Specify Required Resources

Every task in project development necessitates resources, whether they be personnel, materials, tools, technology, time, money, or expertise. Effectively mapping out the project resources ensures their availability, allowing the project to be delivered on time and within budget.

Other Tips:

• Recognize resources that are in short supply and prioritize them. Also, devise a strategy for shared resources to optimize their use
• Create a resource management plan to better handle any resource scarcity or unavailability
• Establish broad categories at the project level to manage resource assignments

5. Develop A Project Milestone Timeline

After assessing the objectives, challenges, and resources, it's time to consolidate them and create a timeline for key project milestones. You can include a timeline in your project scope statement to indicate the schedule or have a visual representation (PERT chart) of it.

Other Tips:

• Assign a provisional date to each milestone. This will prioritize associated tasks and provide insights into the risk of not completing the project according to this schedule. Milestones can also be assigned to individuals and teams
• Establish a contingency plan that can be activated immediately if a milestone is missed to help get back on track
• Keep external stakeholders informed by sharing the project milestone timeline and subsequent updates

6. Identify Tasks And Deliverables

Every project can be divided into tasks that result in corresponding deliverables. Tasks are the smallest unit of a project, while deliverables are tangible or intangible outputs resulting from these tasks. They should be included in the project scope statement to prevent scope creep.

Other Tips:

• Based on your project's complexity, deliverables can be categorized as internal, external, and planning
• Ensure all are accounted for so none are overlooked
• Prioritize tasks and set realistic deadlines for them so the team can work effectively
• Also, define the approval process for deliverables. Avoid multitasking, as it can decrease efficiency by up to 40%. Instead, try task batching
• Use task management software if necessary

Dream Smaller: Step By Careful Step

'Dream big' is a very common phrase you hear when planning for project execution. There is no harm in that. Your ambition is what makes it possible to plan projects that lead to success.

Yet...

It can be the same thing that can lead to your project's failure.

Taylor Swift was not always the big act that she is today. Her name is now synonymous with success and fame. However, her testament is the result of small and continuous efforts. She started singing at the age of 13, signing a publishing deal with Sony/ATV when she was only 14.

Eventually, she terminated that deal to sign a deal with Big Machine Records. No one knew that name in comparison to Sony/ATV. Not many people could scope what exactly could be gained by signing a deal with a company that no one knew of.

Yet, this small step in the right direction changed everything. From singing 'Tim McGraw', she became a hit with her album Fearless. With success came a lot of criticism about her singing, writing, and public appearances. Yet, nothing stopped her in her tracks. How did she manage that? She found the missing pieces, the small steps she could take to improve herself.

She addressed these concerns in an open letter she wrote before the release of her next album, Speak Now. To overcome the concerns about her singing and vocals, she started to take singing lessons. To prove herself as a writer, she started to write her songs on her own entirely.

What Does This Prove?

Just because you are Taylor Swift does not mean that you are handed success on a platter. In other words...

...avoid scope creep. Even with fame or luck on your side, it is not guaranteed that your project will be a hit. The antidote to project scope creep is defining project scope before you start working. You will have a realistic idea of what your project team is capable of delivering in a given time period.  

And most importantly, don't forget to celebrate the little wins as you move along. Need some more help? Here is our project scope template you can use to start working to accomplish your dreams...swiftly.

		Project Name: New Client Questionnaire
Description: Automated questionnaire that’s delivered to all new clients after we’ve secured a signed contract	Deadline: November 25, 2020	Manager: Isabel	Goal: Create a new client questionnaire that will streamline the intake of new clients and ensure we have all necessary client information from the get-go	Deliverable(s): Online questionnaire that’s automatically delivered to new clients
Tasks:   (In-Scope Items)  Decide and draft questionnaire copy  Input the questionnaire into an online form  Create a landing page where clients can access and learn about the questionnaire  Set up an automated email that delivers the questionnaire
				Constraints:  It needs to be live by November 25, 2020  Total project budget can’t exceed $5,300  Web development team will not be available to create the landing page until the end of October