One of the reasons I love weekly billing is that it’s so easy to overbook yourself with other billing methods.
When I work hourly I continually ‘manufactured’ hours simply because I figured I could find time to get things done. That left me over committed all the time.
There was no margin in my days. It all ran to the max.
If you want to provide awesome work then you need to make sure you have the time to do it.
Quality and time go hand in hand in this case and it doesn’t just apply to programming. It applies to everything that we do. If you want to do something right, take the time to do it well. – Matthew Lang
If you simply provide ‘fast’ work and continually load yourself up with more work then your quality will suffer. Yes you may make more money for a bit.
Long term your reputation will suffer.
You will be known as the person that does rushed work which isn’t quite right. You’re always going to be behind and never have time to really provide quality.
It’s hard to charge well for that type of work.
I have been that person, I may even be that person again. Knowing I’m terrible at context switching I set up weekly billing to try and make sure that I won’t be that overloaded developer delivering functional but not quality work.
Delivering consistent quality work requires discipline.
Have any tips that have helped you set up your business so you can deliver consistent quality?
How do you make sure that you have margin?