Re: Programming Bid Template
The biggest thing I have a problem with is accounting for meeting time and changes/rework. I do more than just development, so that is only one small piece of the puzzle for me. I notice that there is still a lot of "gut feeling" that goes into my estimates and sometimes my gut is wrong. It's all about learning from your experience.
One thing that I have found to mitigate some of the risk is to get customers to agree on doing some/all of the discovery as a separate initial contract (A day or two to a few weeks depending on size). That way you have all of the information you need prior to even starting a design and you can get more accurate numbers in your second contract, which is the contract for the work being performed.