For sure, estimating has got to be a topic in the "Business" track at IPTW.

Or we could just skip the poetry reading and replace it with a marathon
reading of this thread, looped for the entire duration of the workshop.

Today I took a few moments to write up an agreement for a job, that I had
estimated a few weeks ago, and given both a price and a completion date on.
After the initial oral agreement, the client, who is also that worst of all
animals, a good friend to whom my family owes a few meals, called and
requested some additional work that will require that I spend an
inestimable amount of time looking for material for. After that she called
again and requested some additional work on the project. With each change I
gave her an additional price to figure in, and explained that it would also
delay the completion of the project. Each time she agreed.

After receiving her copy of the agreement, she immediately called me to
protest, saying that there had been some serious miscommunication. I had
promised that the job would be done by date X and now I was putting it off
to date Y, a month and a half later. Impossible! she said. And not our
original agreement.

It only took an hour, for which I haven't yet figured out how to bill her,
to go over the whole extended transaction, and make her see that her
changing the terms of the agreement would, as I had told her with each
adjustment to it, make it impossible for me meet the original completion
date. "Well, I don't want to rush you. I really want you to do your best
work. But, it's really important to me, so try real hard to get it done as
close to the original date as possible."

I can't wait until I'm done and she can express her disappointment that it
took me so long. Anyway, I don't think that she's as good a cook as she
thinks she is.

Sometimes, I think that the best contract would include the cost of a
cruise ticket for the client that would keep him or her up in the Alaskan
fjords until after the worst-case scenario completion date has come and
gone.

Bruce