Feedback that contradicts itself, arrives late, or comes from six people
Most revision overrun is a feedback process problem rather than a quality problem.
Revision consumes more time than anything else in creative and development work, and the usual explanation — the client is indecisive — is rarely the whole story. The process is usually the cause.
Require consolidated feedback
Six people sending individual comments produces contradictions that you then have to resolve, which means making decisions that are not yours to make and being wrong regardless of what you choose. For background on emotional attunement in interpersonal exchanges, learn more adds another lens to difficult feedback.
State at kickoff that feedback comes consolidated, from one person, with internal disagreements resolved first. This is the single largest reduction in revision effort available and it is a scoping decision, not a hopeful request.
A round is one coherent set of changes. Reconciling conflicting instructions is additional work and should be named as such when it happens, not resented afterwards.
Ask for the problem, not the solution
Clients naturally express feedback as instructions — make it bigger, move it up, use blue. Each is a proposed solution to an underlying concern that has not been stated. For UK freelancer and contractor context, Acas guidance on self-employment provides a practical employment-status reference.
Asking what is not working converts an instruction into a problem you can solve properly, often in a way the client would not have thought of and prefers.
Deal with late feedback explicitly
Feedback arriving two weeks after it was due does not simply shift the schedule by two weeks: the work has to be reloaded, the slot has gone, and other commitments have filled it.
Say this at the time, without irritation, as a matter of fact. It is much easier to explain the first time it happens than after the third.
Reopening approved work is a change
Feedback on something already signed off is a change request, and treating it as ordinary revision is how revision budgets are consumed.
Handled properly it is a short note: this was approved in week three, revisiting it is about four hours, happy to do it — shall I add it? Clients almost always agree, and frequently withdraw the request.
Give feedback a deadline
An open-ended feedback period produces open-ended projects. Five working days is a normal window, and after it the deliverable is treated as accepted.
Stated in the scope, this is unremarkable. Introduced mid-project it reads as pressure, which is why it belongs in the document rather than in an email in month two.