Five Questions to Answer Before You Ask for a Quote
How to scope a software project so the quotes that come back are actually comparable, in five questions you can answer before contacting anyone.
When three firms send back quotes that are nowhere near each other, it usually isn’t because two of them are trying to take advantage of you. More often each firm read the same short request and pictured a different project.
You can prevent a lot of that before you contact anybody. These are the questions I’d like to see answered in every request that reaches our inbox. A few honest sentences for each is plenty.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Start with the problem, even if you already have a solution in mind. “We need a new database” tells an engineer what you’ve decided. “Our month-end report takes most of a day to run and finance keeps missing its close” tells them what’s wrong, and it leaves room for a fix you may not have considered. Sometimes that fix is a lot smaller than a new database.
How will you know it’s done?
This one gets skipped often, and it has a big effect on price. Try to describe the finish line in terms you could check, like a report that finishes before lunch or an update your own staff can push without calling anyone. If “done” is fuzzy, a firm can give you an estimate, but it can’t honestly give you a price.
What’s already there?
Tell us about the existing code, hardware, vendors, and people. Who built it? Is anything documented, even badly? Who will look after it once the project is over?
Don’t worry if the answer sounds messy. Most systems are. The hard ones to quote are the systems nobody can describe.
What can’t change?
Maybe it’s a contract deadline, or a rule about where your data is allowed to live. Maybe it’s a budget that was set before anyone talked to an engineer. Put your fixed points in the first email, because designing around a constraint on day one is much easier than discovering it halfway through.
Who makes the call?
Find out who approves the scope, who signs off on the finished work, and who can approve a change midway through. If the answer involves a committee we haven’t met yet, that’s okay. The schedule just needs to allow for it.
You don’t need all five
Even two or three answers make the first conversation more productive, and they let us tell you quickly whether we’re a good fit for the work.
