Writing a quote

  1. 1

    Describe the problem

    Read the project brief and meet with the client to learn what problem the project will solve for them

    Write 4 sentences that describe the problem in your project notes

  2. 2

    Describe the requirements

    Write down a list of the project constraints that you know so far in your project notes.

    examples:

    Must be a program that runs on windows
    Must output in CSV or Word format
    Must accept X input formats
    Delivered by X date
  3. 3

    Create project tasks

    Write a heading for each of the tasks in your project notes. Your tasks for a software project might look like:

    planning iteration 1,
    planning iteration 2,
    meeting clients 1,
    meeting clients 2,
    progress reporting,
    gui design
    etc.

    Try and group your tasks into things that might take a half day, if something will take longer than a half day then write out how many you reasonably expect. gui1 gui2 gui3.
  4. 4

    Refining your tasks

    If you have too many iterations of a particular task (gui1...guiN) break those down so there are no more than 3 half days per task. So the GUI could be broken down into: Prototype, settings page, intro page, error page, reporting page etc.
  5. 5

    Calculating the cost

    Add up all of the half days, and apply a factor of 1.3 to calculate the total hours. Engineers are always optimistic with their estimates and we have guessed that 1.3 is a good number to account for that.
  6. 6

    Look for holes in the requirements

    Having written down all of the tasks, look for areas where the requirements are loose or missing so that a different interpretation will lead to more work, or the wrong work being done. E.g. how accurate the results must be.

    Write down the requirements you have questions about in your project notes.
  7. 7

    Ring up and talk to Client

    Get a definite answer for every question you had about the scope of the requirements. Write those down next to your original question.
  8. 8

    Email the client

    Write down the answers to the requirement questions you had in an email and ask the client to reply by email to verify.
  9. 9

    Use the standard quote template

    Use the photoshop quote template and include the following components:

    1. The project title
    2. The 4 sentence description of the problem
    3. Our categorisation of the tasks we need to complete and the estimated time to complete them.
    4. Profile of people working on the project
    5. Project constraints, requirements and deliverables
    6. Price calculated using the expected hours, multiplied by the rate of each of the people working on the project.