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A better title: "How I didn't know how to under-promise." I did freelance web design in high school (nothing fancy, HTML/CSS with stuff that clients thought w
by jmduke 13y ago
A better title:
"How I didn't know how to under-promise."
I did freelance web design in high school (nothing fancy, HTML/CSS with stuff that clients thought was fancy in 2006, like Lightbox and RSS) and after my second client, where a five-page photography portfolio turned into a Frankenstein's monster of a PHP web-app held together by duct tape and invalid code, I realized two things:
1. There is never such a thing as being too specific.
2. Bill hourly.
- thejosh 13y ago3. Never do "cheap mates-rates" for friends & family, or this will apply...
- lquist 13y ago2. Bill hourly. Bill weekly, or at the least daily.
- andyhmltn 13y agoI agree, but when you work nights/weekends it's often hard to do so.
- tptacek 13y agoYou mean "bill time & materials". Hourly is just one way to do that, and it's an especially painful and counterproductive way.
- invalidOrTaken 13y agoCorollary: get a deposit.
- mh- 13y agoI agree. I think the relatively-green consultants here would get some value out of you expanding on how T&M can work for them.
- porker 13y agoI certainly would. Even after 7 years of successful work, I've still not got billing sorted. Fixed-price jobs generally take double the time (losing me half); sprints work if the client understands and is in charge of the project, but most see it as a cost-sink and nothing will be delivered without extorting extra cash (which a long-time fixed-price client spat at me last week...).
- otoburb 13y agoFixed price bids are better when you've already established a working relationship with your buyer. A good way to establish a working relationship is by starting off fixed-price if the scope is narrow enough and explaining that T&M is more likely to be more expensive for the buyer based on the scope. Usually this results in the buyer either: (i) asking for a lower price; (ii) disagreeing with the FP bid and going T&M; (iii) walking away. The basic assumption is that scope is narrowly enough defined. If it isn't, then try hard to narrow the scope and give the deal 1 to 3 hrs for this exercise (depending on your available hours classified for business development aka "biz dev"). At this point, hopefully you've got the requirements narrow enough that you can then engage in the exercise above after coming up with an estimate or quote. If (i), then roughly itemize and remove items to bring the price down to change the value proposition. Avoid keeping scope the same and bringing price down, or else this is a plain discount pure and simple and hurts you down the road. If (ii), then the follow-up move for future deals with the same buyer is to clearly show why their final T&M billables could have been cheaper if they'd gone with FP. If (iii), count yourself lucky. Nothing harder than letting business go until you get yourself into a deal where your costs are higher than revenue (aka. negative margin deal). >>Fixed-price jobs generally take double the time (losing me half) ... that sentence implies a pattern of failed FP deals and lack of scope. However, I am empathetic because other clients have stated that they are uncomfortable with code sprints on a professional services basis solely because of the lack of concrete deliverables that can be used as payment milestones or triggers. Code sprints are better off billed on a T&M basis unless, as you say, the client really understands what they're doing. In most cases, buyers don't know what they want, which is why some time must be spent on building on biz dev building the pipeline.