<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Brian Vuyk <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian@brianvuyk.com">brian@brianvuyk.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">Domenic Santangelo wrote:<br>
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Why is this so different from what we do? The OP mentioned not billing for time investigating. I've seen it done that way in a bunch of shops, where they just chalk it up to the "cost of sale". Maybe I'm just stupid and nobody else works like this, but I know that I've spent a _lot_ of time estimating something out (sometimes as much as 20% of the estimate!) and not billing for it. That doesn't seem right to me. How do you guys handle the OP's situation from a billing standpoint?<br>
</blockquote></div></blockquote></div><br>I find the key is to explain that development is an iterative process, and that they won't even know what they want until they see it and start to use it, so it's a waste of time to spend a lot of time doing discovery upfront. <br>
<br>I give them a rough idea of what they can get for 10 or 40 or 100 hours . <br><br> Then I bill them for time worked -- and that includes any discovery that we do. <br><br>I convince them that this is in their interest -- and it is -- because to cost it out upfront, I would have to build in a large amount of padding to cover everything that might happen -- where if they pay hourly they only pay for what does happen.<br>
<br>Sam <br>