“Should I spend 50 hours on this?”

Should you hire somebody to spend 50 hours fixing a problem?

It might sound like a simple question, but you probably noticed already that it leaves a lot of room for uncertainty.

The uncertainty is in almost every word of the question:

• Should: Who's to say? By what standard are we measuring? What are the alternatives? What are the risks?

• You: What's your role in this project? What is your knowledge of the problem at hand? What's your experience handing off tasks to other people? How would success or failure in this effort impact you personally?

• Hire: What kind of business relationship are we actually talking about? Are you conducting a talent search or do you have someone in mind?

• Someone: Who is this person? What knowledge do they have of the problem and of how it's affecting your situation? How much do you trust them to actually get the results you're after?

• To spend 50 hours: Do you really want them to spend 50 hours? Are you hiring them to log hours? Do you care how long it takes them? What happens if it takes them longer, and what reason do you have to believe that it won't?

• Fixing: Do you know exactly the outcome you're trying to achieve? Do you know what a home run would look like? Are you really just looking for a technical "fix", or are you hoping to achieve a measurable business outcome?

• A problem: What's the problem you're trying to fix? What's the business benefit of resolving it? What's the business downside of just leaving it unresolved and focusing on other issues?

This question was paraphrased from one that a client asked me today. She's discovered a bug in a CiviCRM extension, and the extension author is giving an hourly estimate to fix the bug.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a paraphrase of my response.

Meanwhile, ask yourself:

What would you tell her? What would you tell yourself in a similar situation?

All the best,
A.