Tue
Oct
11
2005
Pricing / Scoping a development project - what to say to the client
The eternal dilemma with a project and the clients expectations:
They say “We want an airport and we want it monday, oh! and by the way it can not cost more than $1,000,000”
We then say “Ok, so what is more important? The scope, the deadline or the budget?”
They say “Everything”
we are forever discussing – if you fix the scope, you may have to be flexible with time and money, etc for all three starting points.
In an ideal world we, as developers, would like flexibility on all three! thats not going to happen.
What is the solution? In my experience to date, fixing the scope on medium and above size projects is just not always possible. How do you tell clients this? because basically you are telling them that they do not know everything about their business yet, let alone the technological marvel of future vision you are pitching for.
So in the end you pitch in at a level that is fair and reasonable and depending on how good the developer-client relationship is they either get what they want / need for a decent price, or if either/ both party fails then all hell breaks loose and you can strike them from your showreal.
People such as Fred Brooks in his book the Mythical Man Month amoungst others have been highlighting this for years!
[a topic that swills around my heeed everytime we discuss potential projects and clients thanks to Rod and Brad for the hours of discussion on this]
Another way of looking at this from Joel on Software
