Misread Specs-- What would you do?

Question

Your project owner gave you a spec, and asked you to provide an estimation for that. You gladly complied and gave him a figure. You charged in terms of work/ hour.

But when the project was almost near to completion you realized that you misread the spec and forgot to include a large functionality into your estimation. If that functionality were included than the cost of the whole implementation would ballon by at least 40%. What would you do? Would you try to explain the situation to your project owner and asked for more money?

Edit: Sure, owing the mistakes, saying that I am wrong to the owner is a must. But the question is will you ask for more $$$ to cover the missing spec?

Eidt 2: My question was not correct the first time round! I discovered my error only when the project was about to complete, not still during the initial stage.

Answer 1

Would you try to explain the situation to your project owner and asked for more money?

What possible alternative is there?

Answer 2

I'd explain the situation to my project owner by showing him that the missing functionnality was not part of the detailed cost estimation I gave him.

Answer 3

Assuming that you included the work in your original contract, and simply forgot to do it, the professional thing to do is to immediately apologize and express your regret at the error. Now is not the time for blustering.

From there, you have a few options, depending on the nature of the project and its criticality, the importance of this client to you, and whether or not you expect to get future business from the client.

• Ask for a financial extension on the project; do the additional work and get paid for it.
• Ask for a financial extension, but throw in something to sweeten the deal, such as free maintenance and support for 3 months.
• Do the additional work completely for free, no strings attached, since it was your mistake.

My personal preference would be option #2: own up to the mistake immediately, but try to salvage a workable business relationship from the situation.

Of course, if you're being agile and giving frequent releases to the client, this situation is much less likely to happen! Keep people in the loop.

Answer 4

@ybo is right. Explain, show that it wasn't in your detailed estimate, and use the "errors and omissions excepted" clause in the estimate to correct the error and omission.

Answer 5

I'd own up to the mistake as soon as I realized my error. Prolonging it will only lead to more pain. Which is worse, improving the estimate upfront and asking for more money or working hard with the hopes you can make up for your mistake only to fail and have to ask for more money late in the project? I would think the project owner would be glad to get the better estimation as long as you provided justification for the change.

Answer 6

Assuming I had given a fixed price estimate on the project, which is generally how I prefer to work, I'd suck it up and do it for the original price.

Answer 7

Since you charge T&M (time and materials) you have two choices: sucking it up or fessing up.

Be thankful you caught this early and not late in the piece at which point you'd simply have to suck it up. At least now you can (probably) get out of it if need be.

What you do is this: you explain the situation to the customer. You say that this error on your part adds 40% (or whatever) to the time (and thus cost) of the project and say that the customer can:

1. Walk away at no cost (you eat the cost of any development done so far); or
2. You negotiate a new price/estimate, which is say 30% above the original. thus compensating the customer for your error but getting you something more as well. You can't do this without also offering option (1) or the customer will potentially feel like you're pulling a bait-and-switch.

Or, like I said, you can just suck it up and do it. This may do bad things to your delivery timeline so it may not even be an option.