Improve the accuracy of estimates in FIVE steps!

According to Frank Faeth's article, IT Project Failure Rates: Facts and Reasons about 66% of IT projects, regardless of size, experience partial or complete failure. This can be interpreted in different ways, but there's no denying that in most cases it's related to our time and money. Who hasn't had to pay extra to salvage a project at least once?

I believe that estimating time and costs in projects is one of the most common sources of problems. That's why I want to share five very simple but effective rules, gathered over many years and failures, that allow our team to reduce the risk related with meeting agreed deadlines and projects costs. The rules that will give you confidence, let you pay less for potential mistakes and don't let you hurt yourself while estimating.

#1 Make sure that you have at least a general idea for achieving required results.

There’s nothing worse for your safety than estimating without having at least the preliminary plan. If you don't have a plan, you estimate blindly. If you estimate blindly, you're asking for serious problems.

Whoever did not work for free because of messing up at the very beginning, raise your hand. Guessing the costs, sending offer and starting the process hoping that it will work out somehow. In a case of problems compensating such approach by working at night for free to making up for the delay and cover-up messing up. Classic.

That's not the right path! If you don't want to risk time and don’t work for free, during the estimation process you must identify at least a general idea for achieving required goals that should fit within the budget you propose.

That’s obvious that you won’t be able to find out all the problems and specify every single detail before you start creation process, but the general plan is the minimum that you need to have. If you’re not able to figure it out, for your own safety just don’t even try to send an offer to anyone. Unless you like the risk.

#2 Be the clients' guide, not a slave. Advise, not blindly follow the requests.

If a client asked you to jump into the fire would you jump in? I assume not, because that's risky. So why not to use similar approach in your business? Clients come to you because you have the knowledge needed to solve problems that they have. So during the estimation process use your expert knowledge to advise, not blindly do everything they say no matter if you work on something simple or on huge demanding project.

And after some time... Shit happens due to plugins that have been carresly used, and that's not really surprising. Some authors in such cases just blaming the clients saying "They got what they wanted", but in my opinion, they should should pay attention to not informinging about the concerns and not providing a more efficient options even before sending an offer.

I don’t want to take responsibility for someone’s else sugestions that I blindly follow, especially if it affect my time and money. And especially if they come from this ont mythical friends' son that everyone has heard about at least once. So instead of that, I try to give the clients the feeling that I’m here with my whole knowledge and experience not only for solving their problems by coding but also for helping them achieving better results by advising.

Of course that's nothing wrong if they won't take your advise into account and chose they idea instead, but at least in case of serious problems you can feel safe because you did what you had to do and informed about the possible consequences before sending the final offer.

Remember that a valuable customer pays not only for the final product, but also for the entire process. Remember that clients' success contribute to yours success. So just be the client's guide, not a slave.

#3 Be honest with yourself and people around.

If you want to present estimates that you won't regret later, just be honest and don't try to satisfy anyone at all costs no matter what role they play. Being honest in many aspects is vital to building well-working relations that avoid unnecessary, sometimes even angry conversations, especially when talking about time and money.

Don't pretend that you know something that you don't know to give false results. Every book I read, everything I learn shows me how little I am in this big world, so don't worry if something is outside your scope. If you see that the deadline or budget can't be fulfilled, inform about this. If you have any doubts related to requirements, workflow or just anything, make them clear before you send final estimation.

So if you want to reduce the risk related to estimating process, just be honest with yourself, your team and potential clients. People might want you to do more than you could so you should be able to set the boundaries clearly.

#4 Use the power of simplicity to increase your chances of profit.

People are not really convinced about buying products after reading really complicated brochures including a lot of technical terms, most of which are not even understood. They would rather buy something after reading "Hey man, I'm doing exactly what you need so buy me!". Simple things sell better, so use their power during the estimation process and increase the chances of being accepted!

Try to understand your listener.

Sometimes you might try to show that you have the knowledge that the client pays for not in the way you should. You use a lot of complicated terms, ask technical questions and show at all it cost that you know a lot of things. Remember that your listener might have no clue what you talk about.

Try to understand your listener and don't ask questions that they're not able to answer. Asking simple questions will help you find out the real needs which makes estimating process easier.

Avoid using terms that you don't know well.

You might try to use popular terms to prove that you're up to date with the latest modern solutions. It is great... But only if you know what do you talking about.

Don't ask questions that you can't justify when the client will get back to you. Try to be well prepared and sometimes if it's possible - try to put your explanation as a part of the question to reduce the time spent on communication. Try to answer questions before someone ask them, and belive me - that's possible.

Just be simple.

Simplicity is vital for reducing the time spent on estimating process and improves the chance of success. Simple things sells better so remember about this next time when you'll be estimating something.

#5 Something is better than nothing so always try to give some value, even the smallest.

There is no more honest answer to "How long will it take?" question than "I don't know". And there's nothing wrong if you don't really know something exactly, but if you want to build trust in your estimations you must realise that "I don't know" doesn’t bring any value or solve any problems. And the sooner you realise it, the better results you’ll achieve.

That’s clear that you may not know how much time requested feature might take exactly, but you know how much time the similar one has taken in other project. You know that the current project is problematic and 75% of the previous tasks were exceeded. You also know that the client constantly changes something at the end. So in fact you know something!

Clients drive your business so you need to have them. If you already have them (because you're estimating something) always try to give some value.

Even if you provide time ranges instead of exact estimation, you're providing something that will increase the chances of keeping the clients with you. So next time, if you want to use “I don’t know” when providing estimates, try to find factors you know and use their power to reduce the impact of things you don’t know.