Clients (especially nontech clients) tend to focus on the visible works, things she can click on and goes thru visually. Thus when she asks for resource allocations, many times she doesn't take into consideration things like:
As a result, some thing that takes 1 man moth is usually estimated as 2 or 3 man months.
All this is explained to the client in the beginning, just so she can get the budget approval before we start. In the past, we have run into issues of scope creeps with a much tighter budget (i.e the project was well on the way and the budget was already fixed). This resulted in more bugs, suboptimal delivery and many sleeping nights and stress for the dev team and the client.
With a 2 or 3 man month estimate, if that work is done with time to spare, the dev can work on backlog items and performance improvements, amongst other things. So the budget will be well spent regardless.
Moreover, if a client needs a job that may take only a few months with only 1 or 2 developers, we in general will reject that work. Our core value proposition is in providing long term tech pods, with the outcome of meaningful impact and long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationship w/ the client.
