Scott Marcus
marcus at tsstech.com
Tue May 25 08:43:29 CDT 2004
Stephen, Right or wrong, your contract with the client determines who pays. Are you working by the hour or by the project? If the client won't pay for your time when they agree to pay by the hour, that would be them breaking the contract. These are the type of clients you should get rid of if possible. You must weigh the benefits of keeping the contract vs. free work. Such is the nature of contract work. Scott Marcus TSS Technologies, Inc. marcus at tsstech.com (513) 772-7000 -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Pickering, Stephen Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 9:28 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various Great points, Stuart. Plus, there's the explanations and documentation of the changes. And the clients who don't want to pay for the modifications, even when they prescribe the changes. I once had a client that requested a very complex report. After doing the analysis, documenting the business rules, and discussing the mock-ups, I wrote the report. The client said the report wasn't right, that the calculations were wrong. So, I went over the business rule document with the client, and the client changed several rules. Of course, the client said these weren't changes -- I had gotten it wrong. So I re-did the business rules, and gave them the new report. Again, it was "wrong". Again, we went over the business rules. Again, I revised the report. This went through several iterations. Each time it was wrong, and it was my fault because I just didn't understand the business rules, or didn't get them right, according to the client. The last time they revised (or "corrected") the business rules, the new calculations looked familiar. Sure enough, the business rules now set by the client were the original business rules from the very first iteration of the report. I shared the original document, dated, with the client to show them that we had come full circle, and that they had been changing business rules this whole time. Were they grateful? Did we all share a good laugh, and learn a valuable lesson? Sadly, no. To the client, it was still my fault, and I shouldn't bill them for all of the changes, I should have gotten it right the first time. The fact that I did meant nothing to them. I learned a valuable lesson. I quit consulting and went back into Corporate America. The client is a little more understanding when it's yourself. Don't assume that the client will pay for any and all changes they request down the road. Some will, but some will always try to get something for nothing. Steve -----Stuart McLachlan's Original Message----- On 25 May 2004 at 7:45, Scott Marcus wrote: > > Someone else mentioned not limiting fields to 2 letters for state > abbreviations. Why not? When the abbreviations jump to 3 letters, I'll > make the field bigger. That's just part of my job. > And who pays for that work to be done? Do you stick the client with a bill for a modification that shouldn't have been needed or do you wear the cost of the time yourself. What if you've got the same app rolled out in lot's of different places. It can get quite expensive to provide updates to all the sites. -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com