[matei]

Unfortunately, there are many situations in which you get 3 after the initial estimation, since 3 is a long process which usually can occur only after a deal was made with the client. And in most(every) case, the client wants to have a clear price before signing a deal. The price usually depends on the number of man hours required for the project, so the estimate has to come before step 3. It's a defective process, but difficult to correct.

[cromulent]

Sure, but in our case we have an ongoing deal. What happens is that quality (think % of requirements met) varies to meet the estimate, and the customer loses. They are trying to control budget, but the granularity is wrong.

It's actually fairly easy to correct, but then it wouldn't be "best practice 2.0".

[gte910h]

Sounds like this customer needs to work of a priority list. You get all the features you could implement, and stick them in a list with rough estimates of time (at like a small medium, large, very large type sizing). You then get the customer to reorder them. Then, work from the top down. You can likely predict a certainty line and a maybe line. Share these depending on customer "maturity".

The same "don't get all the features done" thing you were suffering before will happen with the client, however this time, they'll get the most important ones done, and they'll understand "oh hey, giving a bit more time will get X out the door".

And this can be done "outside the process" possibly slipping past the consultants dicta as just "helping you out to figure out what's most important to them".

[cromulent]

Thanks, but we have a high level of awareness of what could be done better, and a high level of experience in doing it the right way. I'm not looking for ideas here, I was just trying to illustrate that bureaucracies can win quite a few rounds before you can wear them down with "I refuse to give an estimate until I do due diligence" approaches.

[gte910h]

That's what iterative development is built for. Set the initial price as a small core object you can discern definitely needs to be made, then get the rest built as a follow on project from the customer after you've wowed them buy building the initial on time and to the specified parameters.