I was lucky - in hindsight - got burned that way after I'd been in business about 6 weeks.
Wrote up one of those beautiful proposals which outline exactly what I was going to do, thereby demonstrating to my potential client that I KNEW what I was talking about.
Waited. And waited. And waited some more, then called client after a couple of weeks.
"Thank you for your excellent document. It had a lot of very good ideas. We are having the IT instructor at xxx school implement the work."
WE ARE DOING INTELLECTUAL WORK
From then on - customer got one hour free; then the meter started. If they want details, they're buying my expertise, and it's been damned, hard-earned expertise too.
Feature creep seems to be the problem here. Money which should go to solid development gets frittered away checking this and that, adding a bit of fanciness here, etc. A friend of mine had a project shut down for three weeks, and his client looking for another developer, because of that. The contact person could not resist adding new things, and willingly signed work orders for their addition, but lost sight that the overall goal was a functioning job-tracking / management system for a printing plant.
How did it work out? Well, he talked to all of his competition, and we indicated in our bids that he would be the person we'd engage to do the work. Hell, he was the most skilled FoxPro developer in town, and the only one who really knew the system.
Some helpful things:
1. Let's conform to original plan, what you are talking about can be added when the project is up and running.
WE ARE DOING INTELLECTUAL WORK
2. How much do you want to spend checking this out? (It's really easy to "Take 15 minutes", then you send an email which might take 30 min to get really clear and accurate, and the answer requires another "15~30 minutes" and another email - hey, where'd the afternoon go?)
WE ARE DOING INTELLECTUAL WORK
3. Trust is important. An outline of the scope of the project, the available inputs, and what the desired outputs are, and an ESTIMATE of what it MIGHT cost. Remember - those napkins, notes and squiggles are contract documents.
WE ARE DOING INTELLECTUAL WORK
3. Bill bi-weekly, with bi-weekly terms.
Clients don't see us at work - and if they did they wouldn't understand. To close off, well-done scripting (or any type of programming) looks seamless and gives the user a good experience.
Don't know if this has been helpful. You might also see if Whil Hentzen is still publishing his "Developers Guide" at http://www.hentzenwerke.com. Or ask if he has an old copy, mine dates from 1997.
Cheers - Miles
At 01:39 PM 4/14/2005, Ryan A wrote:
Hey, There was some discussion before this on how much to charge to make a site / set of scripts, which also turned into advise from the more experienced members of this list...good advise I might add.
Note: This thread is not directly a php thread but related in a big way to what most of us do, you might not want to read it if you only read programming threads, this is intended to be more of a discussion.
That said....I'll continue: One of the parts that I noted (and that has come back to haunt me) is: write the entire scope of the project and make them sign on the dotted line even if they are family friends. (more or less those words) I'm working with a client who is really ticking me off with his constant request for addition of features/changes some of which i pointly decline unless i am paid more...others I do...coz the project is big and well paying....and the changes are not too big. The client I am working with gave me some rough drawings (pen (not pencil) hand drawings on napkins and A4 papers), some scribblings etc
My question is, how can we document the whole contract *properly* when the client is asking you to make something new (eg features not found anywhere else), code, layouts, navigation, buttons, sections, functionality etc? Getting a lawyer is (for most of us...like me) out of the question...
Is there any software out there that helps? or do you take the extra days (or maybe weeks) to write up everything for him to sign on the dotted line? Keep in mind while you are taking the time to write up the whole thing he can pick someone else...or he might be in a hurry.
Advise on what you think would help...and things that you _actually_ do would help a lot of us I think sidestep bad experiences in the future.
Thanks, Ryan
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