[consulting] Professionalism

[Steve Kessler]

I don't think the issue at hand is if a node template takes 33 hours. The
issue is professionalism. Should a company disclose project management hours
vs. development hours vs. admin/billing hours? Is there a limit to how much
wiggle room you can give and still be ethical? For example if a developer
tells me it will take him 3 - 5 what should I tell the client including
project management and admin time? I could say 6 - 8 or I could say 3 -5
programming hours and 1-3 project management and admin hours? I am just
throwing this out there. Just like IBM we all have expenses and compensation
we need to cover just at different levels. If a firm wants to charge $100+
an hour and the market will allow it than a firm should do that (and to be
blunt $500+ if they can). I think the issue is keep professionalism in how
many hours we quote. If they said it 3 hours at $1,100 per-hour we might
gasp but could we question their professionalism? 

The other thing that we must keep in mind is community support and code give
back. Denver DataMan has started budgeting hours into all our projects for
community give back? When I work out an estimate this is percentage of the
hours estimated that should be given to the Drupal community. Is there a
professionalism issue by adding hours to the quote or is it better to raise
my price $10.00 per-hour? We offer flat rates for most of our work as long
as we can define a clear scope so hours are only something I am using for
estimating (and paying contractors) not a final number that the client sees
in most cases. 

Just my hypothetical questions. 

Thanks,
Steve

Steve Kessler 
Denver DataMan 
303-587-4428 


-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Wichmann [mailto:nan_wich at bellsouth.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:02 AM
To: 'A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers'
Subject: Re: [consulting] Professionalism

Fred Jones wrote:
> hired a fancy NYC company ... custom node template, based on a PSD.

That seems pretty darned expensive to me. When I worked at IBM, nothing
could be done by one person. You had to have an account manager, project
manager, architect, QA, etc. Each had his/her own hours to bill, and none
would be as low as $100/hr. However, that still seems quite high to theme a
node, but I've never worked with a PSD. I've done several node type
templates and not even my first one when I had to learn took 33 hours. If
they have to do some hooks to make sure variables are available, it could
easily take more than 3 hours, but nowhere close to 33.

Nancy E. Wichmann, PMP 
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King,
Jr.

-----Original Message-----
From: consulting-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:consulting-bounces at drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Fred Jones
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:09 AM
To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
Subject: [consulting] Professionalism

I work with someone on a Drupal 6 site and he hired a fancy NYC
company (that charges well over $100 / hour) to do some more work on
the site. The client asked me to write up a certain job and include
some time estimates. Part of it is a custom node template, based on a
PSD. The site template remains the same--this node template is just to
customize the content section. OK, it may involve a *bit* of PHP for
special fields, but it's still just a node template.

I estimated 3 hours and the NYers 33 hours. They estimate over $3300
to make one node template!

I don't understand how they are able to have enough business and a
good enough reputation to be charging high prices if they don't know
what they're doing. Because they don't--33 hours for a node template
is silly I think. The other programmer we use could do it in 3 hours I
think (and he's less than $100). He's just busy...

F

PS: Thank you for listening to my rant. I feel better now. :)
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