How to Price an AI Project – Towards Data Science – Medium

I have been asked many times by clients to provide fixed price estimates for large Machine Learning (ML) projects. I advise clients not to fight requirements changes in their first ML project, which is the exact opposite from traditional software development principles. Machine learning is not regular programming. It is basically applied data science, and rolls out very differently in an organization that already has a non-machine learning infrastructure as compared to a start-up with a clean slate. The bigger the unknown, or what I like to call requirements risk, the more I lean toward hourly rather than fixed price. Where requirements are very tight, or what I like to call an executable specification, the more I lean towards fixed pricing.