LooseSuits

So, I've been working at a top tier interactive design firm for four months now (prior to this I owned my own web development shop for 5 years). It has been fascinating to me to see how this firm and the Fortune 500 companies we work with handle creating budgets and timelines. What is fascinating about it is that predicting how long something will take and how much it will cost grows more challenging the larger a project becomes. Even the top brands in the world struggle to define project scopes for interactive work. I think this is because the interactive medium is still so young that people with management skills don't understand how interactive design and programming work. Conversely, those that do understand the development needs for interactive don't understand business management requirements.

I'm curious what you do to deal with this problem. Do you build long term timelines with the flexibility to absorb changing scope? Do you avoid long timelines in favor or a more nimble development process? How do you determine how long something will take, how much it will cost, and what the client will receive?

I'll start this conversation off. We use a multi-phase approach. Phase 1 is a flat fee and it's the cost for us to develop the campaign strategy. Phase 2 is the planning phase (information architecture, design mock ups, etc.). The cost of phase 2 is dependent upon how many elements the strategy calls for. Phase 3 is production, which is dependent upon what phase 2 calls for. If the client has an upfront budget, then we create strategies and plans mindful of the budget. We do this approach because it segments a project's build cycle into 3 unique costs that gives client's a predictable expectation without requiring us to create plans for free.