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Re: Questions - Going from Hourly to Per Project Basis
Subject:Re: Questions - Going from Hourly to Per Project Basis From:"Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 1 Oct 2003 13:20:03 -0400
Sharon Burton-Hardin wrote:
> Project managers have budgets. They get money to do a project. Billing
> hourly with no apparent cap is insane in this environment. They cannot
even
> estimate the total cost, much less get approval for the cost. What do they
> do, submit a cost estimate for "a gob of money" for the docs? How does
> accounting cut a purchase order for "a gob of money"?
Easy. The project manager should estimate how many weeks their project will
take. They should also estimate how many people they need, and how much
those people cost per week. From there, it's easy to estimate total cost. No
gob factor required, as long as management has faith in their ability to
manage the project.
Of course, then the real work of the project manager begins, as they make
sure the project is done on time.
I suspect the move toward fixed bids is an effort to cover up (some) project
managers' track records of missing deadlines and going over budget. Having
failed to competently manage the work, they are now in a position,
labor-marketwise, to manage the costs.
Fixed bids are a way to transfer risk away from management and down to the
individual resources. So if you are one of the resources and you depend on
some other resource, you now have risk without recourse. Because the project
manager, not you, is the only one in a position to coordinate the activities
of all the interdependent resources.
Technical writing is, in my opinion, especially susceptible to this kind of
risk... at least the kind of development/writing work that is heavy on
analysis and discovery, rather than publishing.
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