This is one reason why I don’t like giving time estimates to customers. You know the drill:

Customer: So how long is it going to take you to do X?

Me: Uh, when do you want it?

Customer: Yesterday.

Me: Not that fast… how about on Friday?

My decision for Friday is based on the best possible case if I wasn’t working on anything else. Of course, I always have other things to work on. Then this creates problems because to honor my estimate I have to shortchange some other task, like sleep, which is a common candidate.

So what do I try to do instead? Part of the problem is you just can’t get away from estimating, so how do you make it more manageable?

Well. I am better at estimating small tasks rather than large ones, so I try to keep my list relatively short for the customer as to what they are expecting me to work on. I don’t want to have some giant “Death Star Construction” project deadline 3 years out that I’m never going to finish on time.

I prefer to work in weekly chunks and try to deliver something usable / testable by the customer within a week to prototype the forms and other design elements I’m working on so that I can get them involved, they can see what I’m doing, and they will get an idea right away of what I’m capable of and how fast I can work.

Because this is the way I like to work, I try to position my work as rapid deliverables rather than a chunk of hours and based on my actual costs. As “they” say (whoever “they” are)… Time is Money. That means my programming taking me time is my cost. However, a customer really doesn’t technically care about my time. The shorter the better really. There is some other effect they are going for like, make my boss happy, or make sure I come in under budget, or make sure my employees don’t complain about this big long task they’ve been complaining about for years. I mean, sure, we are all human and I certainly like to work with clients who care about me personally, and my time might come into play there, but ultimately, I find my customers are not so much concerned about me when it comes to how I spend my time, but when am I going to complete something and how much is it going to cost.

So, I try to work in smaller increments without focusing on my time, but delivering outcomes the customer will want. This means I have to talk to them up front and discover what it really is that they want. The bigger outcome, not a feature or a bell or whistle, but what will make them say, yeah, that money I just spent was totally worth it!