If a client won’t give you a budget, they’re not serious

An interesting variation of this was pointed out to me by a colleague while I worked in a very large company. We would often get requests from management to size various efforts. Often it would be hard to accurately guesstimate how long something would take. (Do we get to use a team of the companies most experienced kernel developers? Or will it be work done by some external company?) My colleague pointed out that often the management team had already made the decision and were just looking for numbers to justify their plan. They had a budget, but wouldn't reveal it.

This meant that realistic sizings were often met with skepticism. "Do you really think that would take 22 person-years of effort?" Predictably, this led to the decision being made without the sizing (why did we have to spend two weeks on the estimate just to have it thrown out) or with an unrealistic adjustment made to the sizing (again why bother with the estimate). I hated the idea that the most experienced developers where treated like they weren't really onboard with the company's goals (because of the more conservative estimates), while crazy proposals for version two (with specifications for new features measuring 3 feet high) were thought to be genius; this led to version 2 being a year late and two-thirds of it's features jettisoned by the time of the release--along with the promotion of everyone that had made the worst mistakes.

I worked at one company where the senior staff finally outlawed the posting of Dilbert cartoons on the development floors.

Personally, I never answer this question when using an external supplier.

Because, if you do, it goes something like this:

1. External supplier, "What's your budget for this work?" 2. customer, "Something between 50-100k" 3. External supplier, "blah, blah, blah <about how the work is hard/complex/we poor business saps just don't get it>" 4. External supplier, "Our initial estimate is 100k"

It's a type of price fixing, and as everyone knows the first price anchoring is the most significant. While many people are ethical, many are not - and I'm sure everyone has had this experience at some point, whether in business or a plumber!

That's not to say that customers should not be able to provide an initial good description of what they're requesting. Or that complex requirements development shouldn't be commercially charged in it's own right.

There's nothing in this article that couldn't be inferred from the headline and just a tiny bit of development experience.

The time estimation link that it references is a lot more informative.

Even when a client has a budget, if they won't give you a retainer check, they're not serious about starting right now...and maybe not serious about paying you at all.