3 ms·
First of all your example is not necessarily simple. It might be, but you don't know that yet. I would draw up a list of Requirements. It would outline what is
by donohoe 16y ago
First of all your example is not necessarily simple. It might be, but you don't know that yet.
I would draw up a list of Requirements. It would outline what is, and what is not, in scope. That takes time in itself and you should run it by the client and expand on what each point means. This will allow you to determine anything that can be removed, or needs to be added (and to just understand the project better too).
After that you can use it as the basis of an initial rough estimate.
When you have an idea of how much time it will take, add 30%.
- ams6110 16y agoThis touches on a question I have been chewing on. I've recently started doing contract work. I'm not doing code-monkey contracting; my projects have all required some requirements analysis and design outlines before a reasonable estimate is even possible. Do you normally bill for that kind of work? On the one had it feels wrong to have a client ask for an estimate and then bill him for 10-20 hours of work, on the other hand that's 10-20 hours I could have been billing another job (in theory, anyway).
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoIf you're competing for a contract I wouldn't, but otherwise I would do a basic design phase and then charge them during the advanced stages of design "to get all the details right" (if you're in a fortune 500 company you can probably retire off the bickering between managers over one HTML page)