[consulting] Cleaning Up After Bad Developers

[Brian Vuyk]

Steve,

I usually try to present the client with a long-term cost-benefit 
analysis explaining why rebuilding a feature done incorrectly by a 
previous dev will save them money in the long run. To be honest, if 
there is a incorrectly-implemented feature that the client does not ever 
plan on changing, expanding, or updating, well, usually there just isn't 
enough benefit in rebuilding it.

On the other hand, if your client had a 'friends'-type module written in 
an external PHP script dumped into the site's root... well, there was a 
good case to reimplement using the Buddylist module at the time. It cost 
my client 10% of what they paid to develop the initial 'module', gave 
them far more features, and there is a much wider base of developers 
familiar with Buddylist than some guy's poorly written custom 
implementation.

As to the second part of your post, I haven't really noticed that. I 
have seen an upswing in contracts going around, despite the recession we 
are in. I wonder if it is due to maintenance contracts being resources, 
or companies trying to get some website updates in while the money is 
still available in order to have the upper hand on their competitors 
going into the recession.

Brian

Steve Kessler wrote:
> I am working on a couple sites right now where there has been poor
> development by other developers, egregious pricing, lack of communication
> and poor service because the sites were too small for these shops. 
>
> What are the best practices for explaining to a user why things that they
> think should be simple tweaks need to be re-done because of how they were
> done in the first place? Do you try and do redesigns or tweak the designs
> they have?
>
> Are smaller shops finding they are getting a lot of business from bigger
> shops that others can't afford any more?
>
> -Steve
>
> Steve Kessler 
> Denver DataMan 
> 303-587-4428 
> Sign up for the Denver DataMan Free eNewsletter
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fred Jones [mailto:fredthejonester at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 7:08 AM
> To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
> Subject: [consulting] Cleaning Up After Bad Developers
>
> Was hired as a consultant to fix up a Drupal/CiviCRM site with some
> problems. Not surprising that it had problems because it was Drupal
> 5.1 (yep 5.1) and had no user #0 nor #1. That explained why anonymous
> posts didn't appear. LOL.
>
> All of the modules were also never updated beyond the first upload,
> circa Drupal 5.1.
>
> I guess there are those who "dabble" in Drupal, eh? :)
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