Yes, good questions are important in order to convince a client (whether the project is hourly or fixed price). > There's also risk that the developer they tak

Yes, good questions are important in order to convince a client (whether the project is hourly or fixed price). > There's also risk that the developer they take the requirements + design doesn't really understand what they're getting into and can't execute. Yes, and I've mentioned that. But what matters is if the client is aware of it or not. Yes, you always want to aim for quality clients, still with all this planning and estimation, even with the best intentions I think that a lot of time gets wasted on lost bids. > It's great when you get to charge for the planning phase though Now that I think back, I had exactly one project like this, more than a decade ago. I've created the requirement specification based on client interviews, they paid for it then sent it to a few competing companies and all of us made a proposal. We didn't win it in the end, but at least that was a pretty fair and transparent process. (The company was owned by Deutsche Telekom, so it wasn't exactly an accident.)