Estimating a fixed-price Bubble projects is not easy..
2 years ago, I was
๐ด Grossly underestimating timelines and complexity
๐ด Completing 90% of the projects but was just unable to ship
๐ด Hitting unexpected roadblocks along the build cycle
๐ด Was severely underbilled
But, with each project, I have refined, evolved, and reflected along with my team.
I think we have a solid framework. And it works
Here's how we breakdown our projects proposals
๐ข The KNOWNS- The usual stuff. Signup/login, dashboards, analytics...
๐ด The UNKNOWNS- That's where it gets tricky. It's usually the stuff outside of Bubble. It could be testing data quality, an API, a plugin or a complicated process that we are not quite sure will map on to Bubble.
๐ Here's a few approaches that we've successfully used to tackle the unknowns:
- T-shirt sizing: Breaking everything down into bite-sized portions. Risks become a lot clear when viewed in isolation
- Wireframing: It really shows the end to end flow and gives clarity to the whole project. We use figma.
- A Discovery Phase: For some projects, we need time to research and unravel the risks. Nothing is built here. We'll just look around for solutions
- MVP of MVP: Sometimes, we'll build and test-drive only the core components of the product, ensuring they're robust and there are no breakages
- Feedback Loop: We'll always keep clients in the loop, communicating all risks, ensuring their vision takes form seamlessly. More often than not, they are quite flexible, they trust our expertise and they are open to changing course if needed
Tl;dr- The more prep work we do before the actual build is started, the easier it is to prevent leakages and avoid frustration
How do you estimate projects and avoid scope creep?
#Founder #AgencyOwner #ProjectEstimation