Is It Out of Scope? — Web development
Is producing a second round of brand guidelines out of scope for a web development project?
Yes. Brand guidelines are a design deliverable, not something a development engagement produces, regardless of who the request is routed to.
This surfaces on development-only engagements the same way other design asks do — the client needs a document produced and the dev team is who's available, even though writing or revising brand guidelines has nothing to do with implementation work.
Is it out of scope?
Yes. Producing or revising a brand guidelines document is design and brand strategy work, entirely outside a development engagement's scope, and not something the contract priced for at any stage.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Exclusions clause→ — The engagement covers development work — producing brand documentation is excluded as a different discipline, regardless of round or revision status.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Brand guidelines fall under design rather than development — that's not something we're set up to produce under this engagement. I can point you toward a designer or brand strategist if you need one, and I'm glad to implement whatever guidelines come out of that work.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow flags brand guidelines requests outside_scope on development contracts consistently, since the deliverable never appears in a dev SOW's extracted list under any framing — the explanation is typically short given how clear-cut the discipline mismatch is.