[throwaway342110]

Thank you! That makes sense. The client does have some understanding about the scope of the project, since when he approached me he stated "I'm not sure if it's something for 1 person", but yeah, the timeframe would probably be an issue and I need to push it to cut it to the essential features first and add anything non-critical later.

However, is a 1 year timeframe something common / acceptable in the industry? I don't think everyone is hiring sub-contractors and it's rather hard for one person to deliver anything substantial in 1 year unless they work overtime like 50 - 60 hours per week.

[jonahbenton]

It really depends. Every non-trivial organization has strategic needs the satisfying of which extend into years-scoped timeframes. These needs are intended to be realized by initiatives, which can be broken down into programs and programs into projects. Projects will be order months, a program might be multiple projects in a year, initiatives likely span fiscal years.

So- in terms of having stuff that needs to be done that takes a year or more- yeah, every organization has those. Is it common for there to be one thing that one contractor works on all by themselves that spans a year- sure, less than it used to be, not uncommon, but it speaks to a certain tempo and/or oversight culture that one has to be careful about.

It would be useful for you to understand, from the higher level planning perspective the organization has- why would this be shaped and scheduled this way? Sometimes these things are little white elephant or skunkworks projects that an exec wants to get done but has to keep on the downlow...could be any number of things.

The reason to understand that stuff is because it kind of becomes a risk to you, because these kinds of unusually shaped things also get cancelled all the time, for all sorts of reasons. If you put all your eggs in this basket and then things change- whatever the language of your agreement, you're potentially left high and dry.

So- even if as you are discovering more and making plans and so forth and it all seems good, it's a year or more, makes sense for you alone to do it, etc- still, you want to break down the work into phases (project scoped units), and report on those phases and on the larger phase plan. What you don't want is someone 6 months in poking around being like- what the eff is this? 6 months delivering nothing? What are we doing here?

[throwaway342110]

Thanks for your insightful answers!