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Note that I charged by week, not by hour, which eliminates a lot of these issues. The problem with the project was essentially that the data was incredibly mes

Note that I charged by week, not by hour, which eliminates a lot of these issues. The problem with the project was essentially that the data was incredibly messy, and by the time I found this out the project was already well underway. So I could have abandoned the project, lost the fee, and screwed over my client...or put in a bunch of extra work to get the project over the finish line. I chose to do the latter. I'm not confident enough in my ability iron out all such uncertainties in future projects – software is already hard to predict at a job, and even harder with new clients. Charging by week seems like the best compromise overall.

seanwilson 8y ago
> Note that I charged by week, not by hour, which eliminates a lot of these issues. A fixed number of hours per week? How did you keep the client happy when they wanted to know how many weeks? One issue is if you work smarter or faster is you're not going to earn more and there's only a fixed number of hours in the week. Your client is likely to be unhappy in the end when the costs get out of control too. > The problem with the project was essentially that the data was incredibly messy, and by the time I found this out the project was already well underway. So I could have abandoned the project, lost the fee, and screwed over my client...or put in a bunch of extra work to get the project over the finish line. I chose to do the latter. - Could you have asked to see the data first to avoid this? - Could you have offered an initial paid discovery phase that would have given you time to go over things in more detail first and even prototype it? - Could you have broken the project into chunks where some parts were fixed price and the really unsure parts were hourly?
- SatvikBeri 8y ago
  Not a fixed number of hours per week – more like "Here's the project proposal, I estimate it'll take 5 weeks, here's roughly what I expect to get done each week." Some weeks would be easier than I expected and I'd get ahead, some weeks would be harder and I'd end up working more. If a major event happened that would make the project take a lot longer, I'd renegotiate. > - Could you have asked to see the data first to avoid this? > - Could you have offered an initial paid discovery phase that would have given you time to go over things in more detail first and even prototype it? > - Could you have broken the project into chunks where some parts were fixed price and the really unsure parts were hourly? I could, but (1) most of my projects are quite different from each other, so the risks change, (2) the benefit seems pretty small. My clients weren't clamoring for more predictable costs – mostly they wanted transparency if a project was going to take longer than expected, as well as the ability to wrap up or cut scope if that was the case.

seanwilson 8y ago

> Note that I charged by week, not by hour, which eliminates a lot of these issues. A fixed number of hours per week? How did you keep the client happy when they wanted to know how many weeks? One issue is if you work smarter or faster is you're not going to earn more and there's only a fixed number of hours in the week. Your client is likely to be unhappy in the end when the costs get out of control too. > The problem with the project was essentially that the data was incredibly messy, and by the time I found this out the project was already well underway. So I could have abandoned the project, lost the fee, and screwed over my client...or put in a bunch of extra work to get the project over the finish line. I chose to do the latter. - Could you have asked to see the data first to avoid this? - Could you have offered an initial paid discovery phase that would have given you time to go over things in more detail first and even prototype it? - Could you have broken the project into chunks where some parts were fixed price and the really unsure parts were hourly?

SatvikBeri 8y ago
Not a fixed number of hours per week – more like "Here's the project proposal, I estimate it'll take 5 weeks, here's roughly what I expect to get done each week." Some weeks would be easier than I expected and I'd get ahead, some weeks would be harder and I'd end up working more. If a major event happened that would make the project take a lot longer, I'd renegotiate. > - Could you have asked to see the data first to avoid this? > - Could you have offered an initial paid discovery phase that would have given you time to go over things in more detail first and even prototype it? > - Could you have broken the project into chunks where some parts were fixed price and the really unsure parts were hourly? I could, but (1) most of my projects are quite different from each other, so the risks change, (2) the benefit seems pretty small. My clients weren't clamoring for more predictable costs – mostly they wanted transparency if a project was going to take longer than expected, as well as the ability to wrap up or cut scope if that was the case.