Customer story · Product design & UX
How Lumen & Lathe took the emotion out of scope conversations
A 26-person product design studio gave its PMs objective, clause-level evidence before every client call. Change order prep fell from an afternoon to minutes, and nine change orders worth $23,750 were signed in the first quarter.
< 15 min
to prepare a change order, down from most of an afternoon
- Company
- Lumen & Lathe
- Team size
- 26 people
- Headquarters
- Bristol, United Kingdom
- Plan
- Agency
- in signed change orders in the first quarter
- $23,750in signed change orders in the first quarter
- change orders signed, none disputed
- 9change orders signed, none disputed
- saved per PM per week on scope checks
- 4 hrssaved per PM per week on scope checks
- revision cap now enforced on every sprint
- 3 roundsrevision cap now enforced on every sprint
The challenge
What was going wrong
Lumen & Lathe designs product interfaces and design systems for B2B software companies. Engagements are sold as fixed-scope sprints: a defined number of screens, a set number of revision rounds and a handover package. Director of Delivery Hannah Okafor described the studio's problem as emotional before it was financial.
Her PMs knew when a request was outside the sprint. What they lacked was a calm, objective way to say so. Pulling the right clause meant digging through a signed PDF and a Notion brief, then reconstructing who asked for what in Slack and in Linear comments. That preparation often took most of an afternoon, so PMs postponed it, and postponed conversations became uncomfortable ones. Some PMs simply absorbed the work to avoid friction with clients they genuinely liked.
The result was a pattern Hannah saw in every retrospective: fourth and fifth revision rounds delivered without a change order, extra breakpoints and dark-mode variants added late in a sprint, and a design team that felt quietly overextended.
The approach
How Lumen & Lathe rolled out TWINJAM
- 01
Revision caps as rules, not reminders
Every active sprint SOW was parsed so that revision limits, screen counts and listed variants became boundary rules. TWINJAM counts revision rounds from Slack and Linear activity and flags the request that would open a round beyond the contracted cap.
- 02
An evidence pack before every client call
For each accepted flag, TWINJAM assembles the original request, the matching clause, the revision count so far and an hour estimate. PMs open it ten minutes before a client call and walk in with the facts already arranged, rather than spending the afternoon assembling them.
- 03
Client-friendly language by default
Hannah's team edited the change order template once to match the studio's tone: warm, specific and framed around options. Drafts go out through PandaDoc after a PM has read and approved them. Nothing reaches a client automatically.
Selected moments
What TWINJAM caught, and when.
A selection of the flagged requests that became change orders. Each one was reviewed and sent by a PM.
“My PMs used to dread these conversations. Now they open the evidence pack, read it once and the call takes ten minutes.”
- Week 1
A client asks for a full dark-mode variant of 22 dashboard screens.
The SOW lists light mode only. The PM sends a two-option change order.
Change order$7,200
- Week 3
A fourth revision round is requested on onboarding flows.
TWINJAM flags it against the three-round cap in section 2.3.
Change order$3,150
- Week 6
A new stakeholder joins mid-sprint and asks for data-table components that were not in the design system scope.
The PM sends a change order with a phase-two alternative.
Change order$4,800
- Week 10
Tablet breakpoints requested for the settings area, outside the desktop and mobile scope.
Change order$3,800
The results
In the first quarter, Lumen & Lathe sent ten change orders and clients signed nine, worth $23,750. The tenth became the basis for a follow-on engagement. Hannah notes that none of the nine was disputed, which she attributes to the evidence arriving with the request rather than weeks later.
Change order preparation dropped from most of an afternoon to under 15 minutes, and PMs estimate they each save around four hours a week that previously went into cross-checking Linear issues against the brief. The three-round revision cap written into every SOW is now actually enforced, because the fourth round is flagged as it is requested.
The studio also changed how it talks about scope in kickoff meetings. PMs now tell clients up front that requests outside the agreed sprint will come back as a short written option with hours and price, so a change order feels like a normal part of the process rather than a surprise.
“It took the emotion out of scope management. Our PMs walk into client calls with the clause, the thread and the hours already lined up.”
Lessons for other agencies
What Lumen & Lathe would tell you
- 01
Tell clients at kickoff how out-of-scope requests will be handled. It removes the surprise later.
- 02
Offer options in every change order: do it now, defer it to phase two, or swap it for something already planned.
- 03
Review the parsed revision rules carefully. Ambiguous wording such as “reasonable revisions” should be fixed in the next SOW.
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