Estimates are a courtesy, not a contract

I quote in weeks. Not points, not hours, not a range with a comfortable padding factor bolted on the end. Four to eight weeks, fixed price, and a written list of what is inside the box and what is not.

This is not because my estimates are good. They are the same modest quality as everyone else’s. It works because a week is a unit both sides can picture, and because the interesting negotiation is about scope, not about arithmetic.

The two-page shape

Before I quote anything I write two pages: what the thing is, who it is for, and the five or six things it must do to be worth building. Then I write the list of things it will explicitly not do in this engagement. That second list is the one that saves the project. It is also the one clients read twice.

Nobody has ever been upset by a slipped estimate. They get upset by a surprise.

Fixed price, moving scope

The price is fixed and the scope is the flexible part. If week three reveals that the inventory sync needs to handle signed copies as a separate concept — and it always does — we choose together what leaves the box to make room. That conversation takes twenty minutes and happens over the shared list. It has never once become an invoice dispute.

1. A short weekly note on Friday: what shipped, what moved, what I need from you. Three paragraphs, never a slide.
2. A staging URL from day two, updated on every push, so nobody is waiting for a demo to see the thing.
3. Handover in the last week: documentation, a runbook, and an hour on a call with whoever will own it.

I do not do retainers. If the handover worked, you do not need me on a monthly bill; if it did not, a retainer is just a way of hiding that. Four of my five clients since 2023 have come back for a second project, which I take as the only metric that matters here.

— O.P., FORT GREENE, IN WEEKS