[consulting] Proper Collections Procedure

[Gunnar Langemark]

Michael
Happy to hear you got paid.
Sorry that you did not find a positive mutual agreement. After all good 
client relationships are very important.

I guess most of us can learn from each others experiences.

My thoughts:

Open Source and the aggressive business environment we work in - are 
conflicting.
We work on trust, and tend to believe in each other. In the Open Source 
community people who deliver on their promise, and who take part in the 
work get the higher authority.
In Drupal developers have a high standing - because they actually build 
the software that we all benefit from.


In traditional business we have contracts, requirements specs., and we 
have change requests. This world is based on rules, law and legal rights.
This is often percieved as TOO MUCH documentation - when you start out 
on a simple and small project. But it is probably a good idea to do it 
anyway.
I have been in computermedia and software for the past 15 years, and I 
have designed solutions, webapplications, and done some of the business 
related stuff too - for the past 7 years.
I just went independent, and one of my projects is EXACTLY like that. I 
started it with some friends. We did a simple specs document, but not 
too much - because this was the same as another project - and the 
software installation was going to be identical - or at least very similar.
Now it is taking a different direction - and I have to get an agreement 
in place which will make everybody happy - or at least make them agree.

I'm used to working with larger Microsoft installations or other 
proprietary software. Here we have bigger budgets, and thus room to do 
proper documentation without killing the project.
If you do a 5.000 dollars implementation, you can't fit all that 
documentation into it.

What do you guys do?

If the client understands that he gets standard software he will 
probably agree to pay for stuff which is not entirely as he dreamed of.
If he thinks it's a web design project - where the visuals and 
everything is to be exactly as in the slideshow with designs that he saw 
- he will bother everybody with all the nitti gritti details.

So I see two conflicts here: One between the Open Source community world 
- where trust is good - and the business world where documentation is king.
The other between standard software implementation (which is what Drupal 
is really about) - and the traditional Web Agency web design world of 
the dot com hey day - where cool design ruled, and clients paid millions 
to "move an image one pixel to the right".
If the client expects to have that kind of control, and you sell him a 
standard software project, you're bound to get into trouble. (and it 
does not just go for visual design but also for interaction design)

Do you agree?
If so - what can you do?



Best
Gunnar

Michael Haggerty wrote:
> I've stayed out of this conversation for the last few days but listened to
> what everyone has to say. Very interesting conversation hearing about other
> people's experiences. 
>
> The client finally payed their bill. We never came to terms about their
> 'concerns', but I found a clear way to demonstrate the value of my company's
>