#UX and #design friends, we need to talk about estimating. I'd like to share some advice that's come up 3 times this week, in hopes it's useful. And it's echoed, by the way, in the BUSINESS OF UX course @EliNatoli and I are teaching at my UX 365 Academy (link at the end).

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Avoiding wars with clients is a matter of how you structure your engagements, along with how you spell out what you're doing in your proposals/contracts. That starts with estimating.

The biggest 2 rules I follow are these:

(2/12)

1. I do not EVER estimate a project in full from start-to-finish.

2. Once we're past initial Discovery (see below), I estimate in small chunks, e.g. "here's what will take us to the next iteration/review."

(3/12)

NEVER estimate past the point where you may get new information based on a build/test cycle.

Believe me when I say that you'll be wrong every time. Ask me how I know ;-)

(4/12)

So instead, first, I estimate a Consult/Discovery part that details what I think we need to do to get a handle on what's actually wrong here, and how long that will take.

For example...

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