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Project quotations

Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:09 am
by alex.barylski
Over the years I've fine tuned my quotations, but still they are not as accurate as I would like...

Typically I estimate a project by basically breaking the project into many small parts and in the process essentially design a draft of the project design documentation...

Minus any flowcharts, etc which IMHO are usually worthless from a developer standpoint, but non-tech savvy users seem to like them... :P

Anyways, here is my problem...as a psuedo-consultant...the market almost demands that I offer free projecty estimates as everyone in their dog does so...web design firms, etc...

I'm curious as to how others estimate projects...and do you charge for estimates?

I suppose I could look at the big piuture...and take a wild guess plus tack on 30-40 percent, but that wouldn't be very ethical of me...and for one reason or another, that bugs me...

Clearly though, I cannot spend a week estimating a project, while drafting a design document...

I've considered telling clients this and selling them the design document in the end...so I get rewarded for my time spent, but the problem is...design documents are by no means standardized...

What works for me...might crash in someone else's face...

So I ask...when you estimate projects...do you just determine the number of *views* in a web application and the number of *actions* in a web application and multiply those numbers by the number of fields per view or action???

What is your technique for expediting estimation and hoping for accuracy?

Cheers :)

Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:18 am
by feyd
A lot of your "general" threads end up here.. come-on now.

viewtopic.php?t=45731 may be of interest.

Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:21 am
by RobertGonzalez
When it comes to projects, I look at exactly what the customer says they want, how long I think it will take to develop it, how much time I think I will spend on rework getting it to meet the customers new idea after I'm finished, and how much money I may need to invest in it. Then I usually multiply the number of hours I expect to invest times $50, add in the ancillary(sp?) expenses and offer that as that project quote (with a due date as well).

As for the quote, for me I have found that offering a quote without charge is something that customers have come to expect. So I give it to them. At most it will cost me about an hour of my life, and for me, if I have the chance at landing a 10 to 40 hour project, I can spend an hour trying to sell it.

Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:29 am
by alex.barylski
feyd wrote:A lot of your "general" threads end up here.. come-on now.

viewtopic.php?t=45731 may be of interest.
Oh really :? :oops:

Haha...so thats where my posts go...when I come back and their gone...

I never visit this forum...as I'm to lazy to scroll this far down :P

Thanks for the heads up :)

Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:42 am
by alex.barylski
Everah wrote:When it comes to projects, I look at exactly what the customer says they want, how long I think it will take to develop it, how much time I think I will spend on rework getting it to meet the customers new idea after I'm finished, and how much money I may need to invest in it. Then I usually multiply the number of hours I expect to invest times $50, add in the ancillary(sp?) expenses and offer that as that project quote (with a due date as well).

As for the quote, for me I have found that offering a quote without charge is something that customers have come to expect. So I give it to them. At most it will cost me about an hour of my life, and for me, if I have the chance at landing a 10 to 40 hour project, I can spend an hour trying to sell it.
Hmmmm...10 hour projects...would be nice...as I could likely nail the timing down nicely...but when projects go into months....estimation gets more difficult...for me anyways...

I am really quite detailed in documentation...

I typically sketch an entire GUI out on paper...which can take up to a couple days...then fire up Photoshop and make things pretty, usually one or two screens only...but still takes about 1-2 days for me...

From here I splice PSD files into xhtml and PNG images...and get the smarty template(s) ready...

Then I build the primary index.php script and from here I can usually begin custom object discovery, API design, etc...

It doesn't help that *every* project I complete is slightly better than the last in terms of either documentation, structure, modularity, OOP and so on...

Because every project changes in one way or another from the next, it's difficultly in estimating is again increased...

I spend a great deal of time considering what could be improved over the last...perhaps unfare to paying clients, but this is my tehcnique...I do this on my own time and theirs...and in the long run it benefits us both...

Here is the problem with me and estimation...alot of effort goes into estimation as I feel you cannot esitmate a project accurately without first having a detailed map in which to follow...

I don't like winging it like others...in the sense that I could assume ewach *view* takes 10 hours and each form element takes one hour do some simple math tack on some padding and voila!!!

I simply cannot do it that way...I need to invest some hard time in estimating...

Assuming I get the contract to doesn't make things easier...as I cannot be bothered to estimate a project I cannot gaurantee I will get...

Cheers :)

Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 12:40 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I can see where you are coming from. But I seriously do not ever want to put that much time into an estimate. My clients have never told me that the estimate I gave them wasn't detailed enough or that I didn't do a good enough job in conveying to them what I was going to do as part of their project.

I have a tendency to assume that my users do not want a technical overview of the work that I am going to do. I also assume that the majority of my prospects are really more concerned with getting what they ask for on time as opposed to getting a well-detailed, drawn out example of what I am going to do. Of course, both os uf do things our way because we feel we are best servicing our clients to their satisfaction. So in that respect, neither of our means of providing estimates is right or wrong. And I will comfortably conclude that our clients are usually satisfied with our final products.