Planning the Future

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When starting up new projects, I always find it very challenging to make any predictions about the time it will take to accomplish this or that task.

I am very pleased with BaseCamp, but when faced with the idea of milestones for a project, I can only make the roughest of guesses.

Calendars are great for forward planning and scheduling events, but what are the best ways of representing the future visually?

furthermore...

Nobody can see into the future of course, but what is the best strategy for developing a plan for a project? How can you determine how long something will take?

When you first start out with any kind of project you need to decide (with the client's approval) whether you will charge by 'counting the hours' or by a 'fixed-rate'. Whichever way you go, the client will need to know what they are getting into. They will ask How many hours will this take? and - How much will this cost?. They will expect answers and they won't give you the work until they know. You, the creative, would love to just do it 'till it's perfect, but this is just not real, unless you find a client who loves you!

Fixing a Price

When you estimate for a job, you are basically saying this is how long I think it will take and I will charge you this much. But what if you get it wrong and it takes longer than you think; well you lose! So, what to do about these risks:

  • Overestimate
    • This has the risk that the client sees a more expensive job than they need and you might not get the job at all.
  • Underestimate; You may feel that this job merits a low price so that you are sure of getting the job
    • the risk here is that you set a precident for the pricing of work
    • in any case, you need to make a living
  • Set a price and then add a contingency
    • Good one, but be sure to tell the client that you 'might' need the extra sum

Guessing the Guess Right

This is the nub of the problem! How long will it take?

Possible helpful strategies:

  • Break the project down
    • Divide the project into smaller (as small as possible) tasks
  • Try to organise task milestones into a sequence
  • Think about how long you need for each task and which tasks are dependent on other tasks
  • Set dates for milestones

As I say - BaseCamp is good, but, the milestone feature insists that you set dates for milestones. That is actual days. It would be useful to be able to define a week as a projected finish period. In fact, the to-do list is your starting point and then convert those to milestones when you are sure about the date.

So with a schedule, you can get closer to guessing the amount of time it may take you, and, thus; how much to charge.

Learn by Measuring 

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.  - Edward Gibbon

This is all very difficult when you are starting out but the big idea is that you must measure what you do, as you do it. That way, you can build on your experience and even show your clients what have done before and even *possibly* reveal what it cost.

I use Freshbooks, which can help measure the time taken on parts (and then the whole) of a project. Figuring out an estimate for a new job is then a matter of going back through what you did before.

Posted on 21 Jul around 1pm

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