Pricing fixed-scope work honestly
A fixed price is a bet on your own estimate. Here is how we shape one so the bet is fair to both sides rather than padded into safety.
Clients ask for fixed prices because they need a number for a board. Agencies resist them because scope moves. Both positions are reasonable, and the resolution is not a bigger contract — it is a smaller, better-specified unit of work.
We will not price a build we have not scoped. The discovery sprint exists for that reason: one to two weeks, itself fixed price, producing a written specification with an explicit list of what we are not doing. Without it, any number is padding plus hope.
Padding is the dishonest part of most fixed bids. If you cannot see the estimate, you cannot tell whether you are paying for the work or for the vendor's uncertainty. We show the breakdown, including the buffer, and name what the buffer is for.
Change requests get priced individually and separately. That sounds bureaucratic and it prevents the most common failure in fixed-scope work, where a series of small unbilled additions quietly consumes the margin and the timeline, and the relationship sours over something nobody agreed to.
Where fixed price genuinely does not fit — an unclear roadmap, a research-heavy product, a platform that will keep growing — we say so and propose a dedicated team instead. Selling a fixed price on work that cannot be fixed is how both sides end up in a dispute.