Fixed price Fixed-price project tracking software
Fixed-price project tracking software has only one thing to make visible: the gap between what was promised and what is produced. A fixed-price project can show reassuring progress and already be lost, because progress says neither what it costs, nor what had been sold. This gap exists from the first month. It is simply written down nowhere.
The seven leaks of the fixed-price project.
Value is almost never lost all at once. It is lost in a chain, and each link has a name.
| The leak | The mechanism |
|---|---|
| Scope | Each small addition not turned into an amendment chips away at the margin without leaving a trace. |
| The theater committee | A slide prepared in two days, a one-hour committee, minutes never formally approved. |
| Dead actions | Ten to twenty actions stated orally per committee. Three weeks later, nobody knows who carried what. |
| Invisible teams | A team member disengages, and the whole team says “we saw nothing coming”. |
| Late margin | Drift is detected at invoicing, when the client refuses to pay. |
| Black boxes | A subcontracted work package whose only reporting is a monthly email. Everyone cultivates their own truth. |
| Shadow IT | Without an end-to-end tool, each team deploys its own. Data lives everywhere and nowhere. |
SOURCE orgatypik analysis, taken from value lost in projects, where each leak is detailed with what plugs it.
Why drift is discovered at invoicing.
Because it is the first moment two figures meet: what you have spent, and what the client agrees to pay. Until then, they live in two different places, held by two different people, and reconciled by hand once a month at best.
This is not a lack of rigor. It is a consequence of the tooling: progress tracking is in one tool, time spent in a second, the contract and its milestones in a file, and the version the client has in mind in their own memory of the last meeting.
An invoice that is not disputed is an invoice backed by dated proof that the client read as the work went. As long as this proof does not exist, the end-of-project discussion is a negotiation, not an observation.
Four things, and as early as possible.
The gap between time spent and time sold
Calculated as soon as production is entered, not at closing. It is the only indicator that moves before it is too late.
Every request, dated
A change requested in a meeting becomes a record at the moment it is made. The amendment then rests on an observed gap.
Contractual milestones
What was promised, by what date, and what is still missing to meet it. Including when the delay is the client's.
A locked state at each committee
Historized, dated, not rewritable. From one committee to the next, the gap is read instead of being argued.
See the margin being made, rather than discover it.
Tracking a fixed-price project is not a reporting problem. It is a problem of timing: everything observed at closing could have been corrected three months earlier, and everything visible continuously stops being a surprise.
The shift fits in one line: instead of producing every month a document about the project, you work in the place where the project is written, and the client reads the same thing you do there. This is what we call operational commitment management.
In pylotik.
What comes into existence on a fixed-price project.
The margin, continuously
The gap between time spent and time sold is calculated at time entry. Financial risk shows from the first month, in particular under-invoicing.
The scope, traced
Every request leaves a dated record, and the amendment starts from an observation rather than a discussion.
The committee, approved on both sides
The minutes go to the client for approval, lock once approved, and are corrected by a new cycle, never by rewriting.
The history, not rewritable
Each locked week stays readable. This is what makes it possible to say when a gap appeared, and not only that it exists.
The full tour is on the product page. The management control and billing tracking modules are available: see the roadmap.
What scope costs, on average.
One project in two sees its scope slip, and the gap between those who waste little and the others is a gap in steering maturity. The detail is on value lost in projects.
What we are asked about fixed price.
How do I calculate the margin of a fixed-price project in progress?
By matching actual time spent against time sold, at each production entry, rather than waiting for closing. The calculation itself is simple; what is usually missing is that the two figures live in the same place and at the same date.
How do I justify an amendment without damaging the relationship?
By basing it on an observed, dated gap, not on an end-of-project assessment. A request recorded the day it is made is discussed calmly; the same request discovered six months later becomes a dispute.
What if the delay comes from the client?
It is visible like yours. An action is closed by whoever requested it, and a milestone waiting for a client-side approval is dated just like a deliverable running late on your side. This is the condition for the record to hold on both sides.
Does it work for time and materials?
It is not our ground. In pure time and materials, staff placement or continuous operations, the need is a monthly invoicing document, and other tools do that well. pylotik starts where the time spent must be matched against a dated commitment. See the commitment levels.
Can we take over a fixed-price project already under way?
Yes, with its work packages, its milestones and its remaining work. The point is not to reconstruct the past but to lock a first dated state: from there, each gap becomes readable and attributable to a week.
Does the client see our margin?
Never. What is internal to the supplier stays invisible: margins, costs, workload, management. The client sees progress, milestones, the risks that concern them and their own actions.
Going further.
- Project management in an IT services company: the mix of time and materials and fixed price, and what you equip.
- The commitment levels: the ten contract modes, and where pylotik is relevant.
- Operational commitment management: the definition of the category.
- The product tour: project, schedule, finances, risks, committees, client access.