2023-2024
First solo industrial deal: payroll system delivered through a hard lesson in estimation
Project Manager & Full Stack Engineer · Tangga Mas Jaya Makmur
- Laravel
- React
- MySQL
Overview
This was my first industrial project taken solo. I sourced the client, wrote the proposal, and assembled a team of four: a designer, a mobile app developer, a frontend engineer, and a backend engineer.
I underestimated the work. I scoped it naively as "a payroll system" and estimated four months. In reality, hidden business rules — attendance, shifts, overtime, tax components — kept surfacing after implementation started, and the project took eight months.
At month four, the budget and timeline miscalculation forced a hard call: I ended the four developers' contracts and continued alone. I had led the project from the start, and I finished it solo — delivering the remaining work without abandoning the client.
The mistake was real, and so was the learning. Today I dig deeper during discovery, map edge cases earlier, and structure contracts with clearer scope, change requests, and milestones — lessons I applied on later projects at Tomang, Armada, and IOC.
Work summary
First solo industrial deal
Sourced, scoped, and signed the project independently, hired and managed a four-person team: designer, mobile developer, frontend engineer, and backend engineer.
Underestimation and its cost
A four-month estimate became an eight-month reality. Payroll rules that seemed simple on paper — attendance, shifts, overtime, tax — only became clear once implementation was underway.
The hard call at month four
Stopped the team's contracts due to a budget miscalculation, took over all remaining development work, and still delivered the system without leaving the client with unresolved delivery.
What changed afterwards
Deeper requirement discovery, earlier edge-case mapping, and stronger contracts on later projects — concrete habits formed from a costly mistake, not just hindsight.