NYCPHP Meetup

[Francisco Reyes]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, Adam Fields wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 06:46:02PM -0400, Francisco Reyes wrote:
>> The way I see it, it's all about risk.
>
> On this, I agree, but I think your black and whites below are too
> black and white.

That's just my view. :)


>> Hourly rate. The customer takes all the risk.
>
> That depends. Do you have accurate specs and reasonable estimates? In
> my experience, the upfront work done to make hourly contracts work
> makes for better projects with higher customer satisfaction at the
> end. It also results in happier consultants, who don't feel like
> they're getting nickel-and-dimed all the time.

They are countless things that can go wrong.. even with good specs.
For instance my impression is that you describe a near perfect scenario 
which rarely happens.

* The people who gave the specs to the consultant may be a fraction of the 
user population.

* People that interface with the consultants may not be available making 
the consultant having to do more work than planned.

* The people that gave the specs may have forgotten a key few points 
because they only occurr rarely, but yet are major showstoppers.


> If you don't trust your consultant to do the work as efficiently as
> possible, don't hire that person.

Even if you trust the person the risk for hourly work is still 100% on the 
customer.. What do you think the customer will do if the project is late, 
but the consultants, that they trust, keep saying it's coming along ok? 
They will likely continue.. or if this system/implementation is critical 
for the business? The customer basically may have no choice but to take 
the hit.


>> Fixed rate. The consultant takes all the risk.
>
> Depends. Again, in my experience, fixed rate bids are often heavily
> padded, because the consultant assumes they're going to get screwed.

I don't pad excesively my bids, because then the customer may just decline 
and go with someone that will low ball the bid to just ask for more 
later..


> I work almost exclusively hourly, and if I finish something early, I
> always bill less than the estimate.


I wish I had contracts where the work was as much as expected. :-)
The people I have done systems for are non technical or not the primary 
users that will have to do the system. The end result.. I rarely ever get 
the full picture until the project is on the way.

Although I tend to do primarily fixed price work I am learning on how to 
mitigate the risk.. but still think that there is no mid point (and again 
that's just my very biased view). The 2 main things I am doing to reduce 
risk are having a detailed list of what the project will entail AND to 
specify what is expected from the customer.

My last two projects have gone less than perfect not because I didnt' get 
the "right specs", but because the people that gave me the specs didn't 
know the entire picture.. so the "right specs" I got where not the specs 
needed by the users.. The other problem I have had is users not giving 
enough feedback or giving feedback on a timely manner.

I hope to improve my contracts to increase price if there is a problem 
with user feedback or the specs given by the contact I worked with.



> Yes, this has happened a few
> times, and when it does, it's actually cheaper for the client.

I think each person needs to do what they are most confortable with.
I guess if I was better marketting I would convince my customers to pay 
hourly.. but find it easier to close the deal going fixed... :-(