Originally posted by borstein
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I won some battles, they won some battles but in the end I learned a lot about their way of doing business. Number 1 is that you're going to need a thick skin, stay calm and businesslike, number 2 is that people will deliberately spec the job out vaguely and set the contract up to fail in their favour so they can go for the upsell/get something for nothing.
Entering into vague contracts with a view to the upsell isn't my style (not implying it's yours either!) so from the outset, I want to have the work accurately scoped out and and a clear deliverable set. You also have to know what the risks and dependencies are and have a plan for dealing with it if (when!) things go wrong. If it's a difficult one to scope then you're gonna be wanting a day rate for it.
If you've taken a job on and it's going to take you twice what you estimated because of scope creep or dependencies that the client should have told you about, just go back to the client and renegotiate the contract. Point out what progress you have made, how the scope of the deliverable has changed and how there were dependencies that you weren't made aware of that prevent you delivering. Point out that things are going well, you're going to finish the job with a good result but you're not doing it for the original price as it doesn't make business sense.
Good luck!
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