[consulting] Retainer Plans

[Dave Terry]

Josh, +1 on being transparent and sharing your rates...much appreciated.

I wanted to toss another question out there when it comes to retainer plans.
Chuck, with Acquia, can probably speak much better about this than me, but
what are the defined set of services (SOW) that you are covering in your
retainer agreements?  Do you offer guaranteed turn-around times to fix a
bug, do you offer 24x7 coverage or are calls outside of normal business
hours charged at an escalated rate?  Also, many small businesses just don't
get it - they may call you when the printer breaks or internet is down (even
though you are not hosting their site) because they think since you are
providing Drupal support that anything technology related is covered in
their retainer with you. Or maybe I am reading too much into this, and just
laundry listing the set of services you provide in an Agreement will
suffice.

Acquia has done an excellent job of defining their service level terms in
their subscription based model, but for expanding Drupal shops I see this as
a real challenge.    

Any thoughts?

-----Original Message-----
From: consulting-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:consulting-bounces at drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Josh McCormack
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2008 9:14 AM
To: Jeff
Cc: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
Subject: Re: [consulting] Retainer Plans

On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 11:34 +1000, Jeff wrote:
> Hi Josh - thanks for your transparency :)
> 

It's a great goal in my life. :)

> I'm interested that your minimum level retainer is 5 hours a week. We  
> have numerous sites that would only need that many hours over a few  
> months, to keep security updates current and so forth. Then once or  
> twice a year on average we may do a more significant set of  
> enhancements to their site.
> 
> How would a 5 hour-per-week retainer model handle this kind of  
> situation?

Since we do roll over of retainer hours they'd be able to use the
accumulated hours for something more significant. Often times we're
asked to optimize, add capacity or make recommendations for additional
functionality so using those hours often isn't a problem.

- 
Josh McCormack
Owner, InteractiveQA
Social Network Development & QA testing
http://www.interactiveqa.com
917.620.4902

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