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Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

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21–30 of 109 posts

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#21

Somewhat heretical, but I generally don't. I usually explain that development is an iterative process, and that I generally deliver work as soon as it's done. We talk about the knobs that are available to tune the work to the goal, and how to measure goals. We talk about containing costs, and working together to deliver good value. I find that in general, estimates are rarely, if ever, accurate to any significant deg…

The only right answer. If they cannot accept a diplomatic, reasoned and carefully explained "we can't know, but I'll finish as quickly as I can" answer, then they probably won't be very understandable when things turn out to take longer than expected. Or if they change their mind about what they want and expect you to nonetheless finish on the original schedule because it's just a small change. Politely and gently refusing to provide an estimate for the unknowable, is a good way to avoid working with clients who will be not worth working with anyway.

Hard as this is up front, it's harder to explain afterwards why your estimate didn't work out, and it's harder to eat the cost difference yourself. Be gentle and polite, and accept that they may or may not be willing to work with you on trust that you will do your best to finish as quickly as you can.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#22

I generally believe that stating your hourly rate and providing frequent updates and milestones is a much better practice than giving an up-front project cost. Software dev is a very difficult task to estimate. Giving an up-front project cost is either pushing uncompensated risk onto the developer, or overcharging the customer for hours of work that may not occur, depending on how tough the project turns out to be on…

none of my customers would accept that. They have a budget and your price has to fit the budget period.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#23
We do work on estimate basis. We try to do them the best we can based on our expertise. Even for big projects. These estimates cover analysis, project mgt, testing, ...

And then we put a gross 20% contingency. If you work well and you are good, then good for your wallet. If you suck, the customer does not have to pay for that.

As contingency is hard to admit by a customer, I wrote an article on that: https://medium.com/@gwelr/contingency-explained-to-our-custo... (shameless plug here)

Comments welcome !

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#25

I generally believe that stating your hourly rate and providing frequent updates and milestones is a much better practice than giving an up-front project cost. Software dev is a very difficult task to estimate. Giving an up-front project cost is either pushing uncompensated risk onto the developer, or overcharging the customer for hours of work that may not occur, depending on how tough the project turns out to be on…

none of my customers would accept that. They have a budget and your price has to fit the budget period.

Have a hourly rate makes it easier to decide wether to take more project or not. Especially if the company getting big.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#26

Related question: do you charge by the hour? If so, what's your hourly rate and what software do you use to track your time?

A mix of both.

I charge regular clients (the ones that I do some work for every month) by the hour.

I use a spreadsheet to track my time.

Less regular clients, I estimate the project and bill them a fixed amount.

Shameless plug: For estimating projects I use a web app I built (https://estipad.com). It lets me break projects down into tasks and subtasks and estimate those instead of the whole project. It also generates a PDF that can go straight to the client.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#27
post #13

(about estimating - I don't tend to write proposals) You could have a look at https://www.estigator.com (NB it's a half-finished side project right now) I'm no longer a contractor, although I have been, and I'm frequently asked by my new employers to provide estimates for dev tasks. Trouble is, businesses/clients tend to see an estimate as a promise, or a target. From the developer's point of view it is hard to do an…

Great app right there and I think it is something that can help me get estimates out. Find time to finish and polish it I'm sure you will have many users apart from me ;)

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#28
I'm a junior software engineer. My role in projects is usually optimizing pipelines for scalability, latency etc (though, I do occasionally implement new features too). I work in languages like python, SQL, C etc. So far in my career absolutely none of my estimations has been accurate. My underestimations/overestimations can vary a few days to a few WEEKS! Sometimes, I do some system analysis, find bottlenecks, develop heuristics to optimize those bottlenecks, implement the optimization but later find out now something else bottlenecks the system in a way it's almost as slow/unscalable or the optimization introduces a non-trivial bug. So it takes another round of analysis and optimization. I don't know if I'm just a trash engineer or estimation really is an extremely hard task.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#29

I'm a junior software engineer. My role in projects is usually optimizing pipelines for scalability, latency etc (though, I do occasionally implement new features too). I work in languages like python, SQL, C etc. So far in my career absolutely none of my estimations has been accurate. My underestimations/overestimations can vary a few days to a few WEEKS! Sometimes, I do some system analysis, find bottlenecks, devel…

Don’t blame yourself. Estimation is extremely hard.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#30
post #13

(about estimating - I don't tend to write proposals) You could have a look at https://www.estigator.com (NB it's a half-finished side project right now) I'm no longer a contractor, although I have been, and I'm frequently asked by my new employers to provide estimates for dev tasks. Trouble is, businesses/clients tend to see an estimate as a promise, or a target. From the developer's point of view it is hard to do an…

Hey, I like estigator! Congrats! I will use it.
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