Hey Eric,

At GW we've been doing some cost estimates for projects.  Essentially we
pull together the team, figure out the different tasks that need to be
accomplished, determine who will be working on those tasks, estimate hours
necessary to do the work, and then use salaries to calculate the cost.

Right now we're primarily doing this for digitization projects, but I've
had experience doing this at other jobs (not in libraries) with dev
projects.  There are a couple of caveats to this though:

   - *estimating time takes practice to perfect*.  a lot of the time people
   aren't really sure how long something is going to take until they've
   started thinking about how long things actually take.  and really, you'll
   only know how long things take if you keep track of your time.  that can
   open up a can of worms, but in this case i like to frame it as you're just
   doing it to ensure that a project isn't more work than you expected.
   - *ensure that you're organized up front*.  as anyone can tell you,
   scope creep kills a project.  before you begin estimates you'll want to
   make sure that you know what the scope of the project is.  its important to
   sit down with the group you're charging and really discuss the project.  we
   use tito's project one pagers to outline what it is that we're doing and
   what it is that we're not doing.  sitting down and talking to the
   stakeholders helps us really understand what they want, and provides us
   with the opportunity to say no if something is impossible, takes too long
   given the deadline, or whatever.

If you want, I have some spreadsheets that I use to create estimates.  I'm
happy to send them your way.  And if you want I can skype with you or
something and talk you through what they each do (because I don't think its
readily apparent).

Let me know,
Rosy
---------------------------------------------------
Digital Project Manager
Gelman Library
The George Washington University
f: 202.994.7439







On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Eric Larson <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Any academic libraries out there doing consulting or application
> development work for hire on their campuses? -- not freebie work, but where
> actual money exchanges across campus accounting lines.
>
> I would be curious to hear how you go about pricing out your services, or
> if you have a selection process for the work you choose to perform.
>
> Cheers,
> - Eric
>
> --
> Eric Larson
>
> Web Application Developer
> Shared Development Group
> University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries
> [log in to unmask]
>