How to scope a technical consulting project without underpricing the work

The easiest way to underprice a technical project is to quote the build and forget the edges. Discovery calls make everything sound simple: connect two systems, clean up a workflow, make a dashboard, automate a report. The unpaid work usually hides in access, bad data, undocumented exceptions, stakeholder reviews, and the first week after launch when everyone notices the real process is messier t…