| 8 Steps to Successfully Managing your Documentation Projects |
| Step 2: Estimate Realistically (continued) |
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| As an independent consultant you should calculate the cost of overhead (equipment, dues, education, office supplies, etc.), benefits (health & property insurance), and taxes in your rate. Then add a reasonable amount of profit. |
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| But you’re not just an independent consultant – you’re also a business owner, so don’t calculate your rate based on 40 billable hours per week. Industry standards suggest that you should plan on only 20 to 30 billable hours per week, so calculate a rate that allows you time every week to do marketing, billing, paperwork, etc. This is the cost of doing business. |
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| If you don’t factor this into your weekly rate, you will always be pushing to get as many billable hours as you can and the other things you need to do to keep your business thriving will fall by the wayside – or you’ll have to work 60 – 80 hours a week to get it all accomplished. |
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| Scope the project – Estimate the size of the project by a variety of factors such as page count, days of training, content, etc. Look at the information you obtained during the interview. What are the potential problem areas? What resources do you have available for developing the materials? For more details on this, read the previous article from this series Scope the Project. |
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| Estimate your time – Experience is the best tool for knowing how to estimate your time. But even if you don’t have a lot of experience, breaking the project into discrete tasks – the smaller the better – is your best path to success. You need to: |
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Identify each task that needs to be performed |
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Know how long it will take to accomplish that task |
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| Always include the “fudge factor” in your estimate. Determine how long you think it will take to complete each task. Then double it & round it up to the next whole number. |
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