[sudhirj]

The advice against fixed bids is a bit more nuanced - there are two problems at play.

1. You do not fully understand the scope of the project, or think you do but actually don’t. In these cases a fixed bid will be catastrophic.

2. The client themselves do not fully understand the scope of the project, or think they do but actually don’t. This is even more of a disaster for a fixed bid, because even if you give them exactly what they asked for it isn’t going to be what they needed, and that’s what they’ll measure success against.

The advice for fixed bids deals more with the question of value capture. If by hard work, study, and practice, you have a way to deliver $1,000,000 of value to a client, it makes sense to charge (at least) $100,000 for it, even it takes only an hour. This is technically a fixed bid, but not in the traditional sense. Here you understand exactly what it is your client needs, how you’re going to do it, and what value they will derive from it, and so charge a percentage of that value instead of an hourly rate.

[gdilla]

Fixed price is fine if: Not only you understand the scope, but the client does too. Make sure you write down exactly what you're going to deliver in your statement of work, and ANY DEVIATION, CHANGE, or ALTERATION is a change in scope and subject to a change request in writing with added cost.

Also write down in your SOW that anything you send to client for review or as a deliverable, is considered accepted by client if they don't say anything about it for 2 days.