Budgets and Knowing Your Worth

A quick note: I wrote this blog post a while ago, and have been sitting on it, wondering if I should post it or not. I just wasn’t sure if it was a subject of interest to most folks… but hopefully something resonates in the words below - or you find it an insightful read nevertheless!

I have a confession to make - I’ve never really liked money very much. Amongst other things, I don’t like how it can influence or drive decision making, especially when it leads to problematic situations.

I was once advised that if I didn’t want to do a project, why not just quote a stupid amount of money for it - with the assumption that I wouldn’t get it, but if I did, then the value I was being paid would more than offset the fact that I didn’t want the project in the first place! I’ve never done that, and I never will.

People and Projects

I made a decision several years ago that my working life would be driven by people and projects. As a result I will always focus on the opportunity to work with interesting people, or on projects that I know will do some good in the world - or have value beyond just being money making enterprises.

It used to be a tough balance looking at budgeting for my time and knowing my worth, as my work is so intertwined with my own personal interests and curiosity to tinker with all things UX, design and code!

I’m very fortunate that I get paid to do something that I love. Of course there are some aspects to my day to day work that I don’t enjoy, but the majority of the time I relish the daily challenges that projects put in front of me, and the talented people I get to work with. Whether it be a complex UX research problem, designing an interface approach that allows frictionless navigation through an application, or coding a prototype iteration that finally gets the engagement feedback that was expected, and just feels ‘right’ - I love it all.

The majority of my work is digital though. It’s never a tangible object you can hold afterwards and know just how many hours of work went into crafting it. In fact in most cases, if user experience if done right, it kind of becomes invisible! Trying to make people understand that weeks, months and years can go into producing what may be perceived as obvious, or simple, can be tricky.

I recently had some potential projects come my way. Going back to my people and projects mantra - they were for interesting people, that I wanted to work with, on projects that seemed interesting and would benefit from my input. However, I didn’t end up working on any of the projects, because of money…

Kicking Things Off

I wrote a previous post on my project kick-off questions - one of which was to ask what ball-park budget the client has for the project. In the case of these particular projects, I wasn’t given a budget.

There’s a strange thing that sometimes happens, where potential clients seem hesitant to give an idea of how much they’re willing to spend.

I pride myself on the fact that I adapt and tailor my working approaches across each and every project. The main toolkit I use is usually the same, but I use different parts of it in different ways, dependent on the client and the project.

If I don’t have a budget to work to I’ll do my best to come up with a suggested approach to the project based on my past experience and knowledge of similar past projects - and then produce an estimated cost range.

Using a ranged estimate means that there is a lower cost that the client would be expected to pay and a upper end cost - the highest cost the client would likely pay, based on the proposal outline.

This cost range is large for less defined projects, and tighter for more defined projects. Sometimes I’ll even propose a ranged costing for a discovery phase to just to figure out how much time should be spent on the larger proposed ideas within the project!

Issues start to arise when I deliver a rough idea of costings based on the client’s requirements to be told it’s too much, or not what they were expecting.

When that kind of reaction comes back it raises the immediate question of what kind of cost was expected in that case.

Managing Expectations

I said earlier that I’ve never liked money. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know the worth of my skills and expertise - or how to tailor a cost for a project based on a brief.

If I know what rough budget I’m playing with then I can manage the expectations around that costing - and it will have an influence on the approach I will take. If the client genuinely doesn’t know, then I can only do my best at supplying a cost based on the information they have provided.

Having not been given a budget and then having to justify the costing that is produced can sometimes be a tricky conversation to have. But if there is still an unwillingness to supply an expectation of cost at that stage - it’s usually the point where I start to disengage from drafting any kind of detailed proposal for the project.

There can be an expectation that the cost range will simply be lowered, but none of the items being delivered changed. That implies that the original estimate was somewhat inflated in some way. I deliberately use a ranged quote to mediate this, or at least encourage a client to focus on being a little more specific about features which may have made that range larger in the first place.

Fixed Pricing and Budget Accommodation

Using fixed prices when you’re still hazy on areas of a brief can be a dangerous game for both parties, and I’d much rather be upfront about such things by using a range to ensure there is some flex in a project - which is nearly always needed.

Alternatively the approach I offer, if I am subsequently given an idea of cost and it’s not within the range I recommend, is to reshape the approach to the project accordingly - looking at phasing the approach to the project, for example. Alternatively, I may make recommendations to sideline features which could naturally lead on from a more paired back iteration of the project that could be launched and validated through testing.

I’d always recommend a potential client to have a rough idea of their cost expectations. If they don’t feel they can supply such information, then I tell them I’ll do my best with the information provided.

I don’t like to lose projects based purely on cost - and I will have that conversation if that’s the only feedback that comes back from a rough ranged estimate which had to be prepared without a budget reference.

That said, I would say that you should always be confident about, and know your worth as someone who works on digital projects. Such an approach will shine through your exchanges with potential clients and any proposals that you make, and ultimately instill confidence in clients that you end up working with.

I use a very different approach in managing expectations on a pro bono or elected reduced price projects - but that will be a post for another day!