Re: Quoting a user manual

[Shari Punyon <sharipunyon -at- gmail -dot- com>]

If he spends an hour or two laying out what he'll need, how long it will
take, and a creating a proposed timeline, he'll save himself a lot of
heartache. And if he can't lay out a plan that will give him a reasonable
chance of success and still get sleep, he maybe *should* pass on the job.
But I don't think that will be necessary, or that coming up with a strategy
should delay the project.

I've been in the position of having people like Chris do work for me, and I
know that I appreciated being given a good sense of what was necessary to
meet the timeline - much more than being confronted with a late document,
and someone who thinks I should be proud of the fact that they didn't
sleep.

Chris states that he wants to get more work from this company, and just
working flat out, with the prospect of impending failure isn't going to
help him there. With such a tight deadline, there's a good chance that,
even if he works day and night, he might not deliver - through easily
foreseeable issues. If he says straight out - I need to confirm that your
template works, and have your reviewers to return their reviews within a 2
day window to meet your deadline, see, here's the schedule I've estimated,
he's more likely setting himself up for success.

On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 8:30 PM, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:

> The deadline is Oct 27. That's three weeks from tomorrow. Any time that
> Chris takes to "evaluate" the job, discuss it with the client, get buy-in
> and a signed contract is that much less time there will be to actually do
> the job.
>
> Under these circumstances, the only ways to proceed are to either assume
> the worst case - that every waking hour until the deadline will be spent
> working on the project - and estimate accordingly, or to conclude the
> project is a set up for failure and pass on it.
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
> ---
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