> These days I would handle this easily; after the first or second iteration I would explain the situation: I had based my estimate on certain expectations of how much work would be required; I had not expected to clean up dirty data in eight different formats; they had the choice of delivering clean data in the same format as before, renegotiating the fee, or finding someone else to do the project.
Great advice for dealing with issues we did not consider in our estimate.
Had he charged hourly instead of a fixed price, would this project have been less shitty?
I find that fixed bids they try to take me for a ride, time and materials they are afraid to spend time with me to figure out what they actually want.
I have yet to find a customer unwilling to try to doom their own project or a compensation strategy that reliably prevents it - its just tons of work and communication. Unfortunately I'm just an okay coder and most people seem like they actually want a code talk therapist.
Great advice for dealing with issues we did not consider in our estimate.
Had he charged hourly instead of a fixed price, would this project have been less shitty?
Edit: Fixed grammar. Thanks b0z0. :)