[Sigia-l] Pricing the Design Process (was "Testing your own sites")

[Paola Kathuria]

jamie foggon wrote:
> If you can convince clients to pay you per hour, that's zero risk
> isn't it?

Only for the supplier. How can it be good for a company to
embark on a project not knowing how much it's going to end
up costing them?

Generally - not to jamie specifically - if your proposals
include time/cost estimates, how close are you to your
estimates? Do you get better at estimating over time? If
so, why not charge fixed price?

On a pro rata project, do you find that time is skewed to
the early stages and that things get dropped off (such as
user testing) as you approach the final stages?

How should a company compare proposals when their short-
listed suppliers only provide hourly rates?

I've got into the habit of using KArm to record time
worked on every work activity (even if I'm working pro
rata on an ad hoc item) so that I can compare my
estimated time with actual time.

We tend to start with a fixed-price mini-project to define
and formalise the requirements, which can then be used to
confidently quote against.

> - the client thinks more carefully about how important changes are

And what if the change is really important but the project
has already gone over what was originally estimated and the
client is disinclined to keep throwing money at it?


Paola, a fixed-price convert
--
http://www.limov.com/