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I still have trouble with giving time estimates that seem realistic to me when I feel the customer will think it should be done in a shorter amount of time. I

I still have trouble with giving time estimates that seem realistic to me when I feel the customer will think it should be done in a shorter amount of time. I hate this, because I turn out to take longer and have to push the dealine back on short notice, which makes me feel awful. Especially when I knew from the beginning that my estimate was very tight.

toyg 7y ago
I have a similar problem. I’ve found some of it can be fixed by overquoting and then leaving money on the table. You quote twice what you think you’ll need, then make them pay what it actually took. If they push back on the quote, shave a fourth of it max. If they still don’t budge, walk away - if a customer is bent on short-changing you, there will be worse issues down the line. After a couple of iterations of “I quoted 2x but it took 1.5x so here’s an invoice just for that” they should have no problem trusting your quotes as “worst case” scenarios and letting you free to manage deadlines as it suits you. In the event of it actually taking 2x, just make sure you overdeliver in some way - be it in the documentation for the delay, at worst. The thing is, it’s ok to haggle and say No to a customer. A lot of them expect your first quote will take advantage of them. There will be no hard feelings after the negotiation, it’s just business. Obviously then you have to manage yourself. That’s a bit harder, and very much down to individual preferences and inclinations. Daily meditation in the morning helped me in that area, but everyone is different.
kuon 7y ago
Yeah, I had the same problem, but you can explain why it takes so long to the customer. Another tactic I use often is to cut of features, or simplify them in ways that are subtle to the customer but change a lot in term of development time. For example, let's say you need to display search results of some sort, instead of displaying all the results with pagination, you can just display the 50 highest results. The customer might not notice, and you just cut yourself some development time. Of course this is just an example, but you get the idea.

toyg 7y ago

I have a similar problem. I’ve found some of it can be fixed by overquoting and then leaving money on the table. You quote twice what you think you’ll need, then make them pay what it actually took. If they push back on the quote, shave a fourth of it max. If they still don’t budge, walk away - if a customer is bent on short-changing you, there will be worse issues down the line. After a couple of iterations of “I quoted 2x but it took 1.5x so here’s an invoice just for that” they should have no problem trusting your quotes as “worst case” scenarios and letting you free to manage deadlines as it suits you. In the event of it actually taking 2x, just make sure you overdeliver in some way - be it in the documentation for the delay, at worst. The thing is, it’s ok to haggle and say No to a customer. A lot of them expect your first quote will take advantage of them. There will be no hard feelings after the negotiation, it’s just business. Obviously then you have to manage yourself. That’s a bit harder, and very much down to individual preferences and inclinations. Daily meditation in the morning helped me in that area, but everyone is different.

kuon 7y ago

Yeah, I had the same problem, but you can explain why it takes so long to the customer. Another tactic I use often is to cut of features, or simplify them in ways that are subtle to the customer but change a lot in term of development time. For example, let's say you need to display search results of some sort, instead of displaying all the results with pagination, you can just display the 50 highest results. The customer might not notice, and you just cut yourself some development time. Of course this is just an example, but you get the idea.