Dan Waters
df.waters at comcast.net
Tue Dec 20 18:20:59 CST 2011
Yes! Did I say Yes! Customers tend to buy on who 'sounds' like experts, even though the customer has no way to know who is really qualified. I have a specific process I go through to avoid this. It has two major steps - Requirements and Development. In the Requirements stage, the deliverable is a set of requirements that could be used by anyone. I will estimate the amount of time (money) this will take, but I won't get pinned down. I end up with a set of screenshots that were developed by me and a user group over time. During this phase, I simply bill by the hour. During this time, I am working as a consultant just to create requirements. >From the requirements, I quote a fixed amount to do the Development phase. The customer is free to take the requirements and have them quoted by someone else. If they want to find a cheaper company, so be it - but it hasn't happened yet. At some point during Requirements, I'll start giving a range of what the Development might cost, and I've learned to err on the high side. Another good practice is to do bite-sized pieces. Whatever get chewed off in the beginning will determine what they want to eat later on! Maybe you could now 'ride in on the white horse?' Good Luck! Dan -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark Simms Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:22 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: [AccessD] I told you of this one before.....and now another The first one was that client who balked at my $80k estimate for the shipping CRM system rewrite.originally done in VB, Access97. Well, I checked back with the guy at the client company with whom I collaborated with to create the add-on needed to support a new service. It appears the Dot-net development has stopped, the system never got released, and this is likely going to litigation. The client has paid about $180,000 to date and has refused to pay any more invoices from the consulting firm. It has been 2 years in development. Interestingly, part of the problem appears to be the fact that "this guy" was not at all involved in the rewrite specifications. Some other managers took over that task and it appears they were flip-flopping on the specs and functionality. So this is now a case of BOTH SIDE BEING RESPONSIBLE for the overrun. However, NEITHER ONE sees it that way. Does this sound familiar to anyone ? See next post for the next "doozy" I've run into.. -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com