MARTYHAUGHT

I have been finding myself thinking about Hashrocket’s (Obie’s new company) new offering called 3-2-1 Launch. It’s a fascinating idea to sell a short block of focused development to a client to kick start their new project for a fixed price.

At a recent Derailed meeting we conducted a panel on consulting/contracting as a business. One of the many points discussed was on whether to give a fixed price or an hourly bid. The prevailing advice was to go with hourly. This seems quite wise to me as on every project I worked on what the client initially thought they needed (the original spec) was not what we ended up building. This is perfectly fine but makes giving a fixed price bid very difficult. You’d need to make sure you define scope and give sufficient buffer so that your protected when the client asks for something different or stretched features a bit further. This process of honing what you’re building is critical but can hurt your bottom line if your fixed price bid doesn’t factor it in.

So why bother with fixed price bids? Well, it seems many, many clients prefer fixed price bids. It worked nicely with the budgets and is easier to sell to managers/investors. I can totally understand that point of view.

This is where 3-2-1 Launch’s concept is great. You’re buying X amount of time in a reasonable, meaningful chunk that gives the client the comfort of a fixed price bid without exposing the developers to project overruns. It’s also good for the developers as sprinting on a new project in such a brief timespan creates more efficient use of time. I can remember numerous times in the past where we had some new feature or bug fix that needed to be done in a short period of time and required focused work to do it. Obie’s approach fits nicely with this. I wonder how a similar approach might work when bidding on future project. Food for thought, indeed.

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