[consulting] Ah, the trials and tribulations of sub-ing - a tale of woe

Tue Nov 24 16:31:55 UTC 2009

... sounds like a good use for the Book module

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 6:30 PM, David Hazel <dave at hazelconsulting.com>wrote:

>  bet there are enough of these "tales of woe" to publish a nice short story
> compilation.
>
> You know, something to read the kids at night when they say they want to
> grow up to be like daddy and mommy.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Jeff Greenberg <jeff at ayendesigns.com>wrote:
>
>> I've been a development consultant in one flavor or another (freelance,
>> humongous computer company, software house, etc.) since punch cards, and
>> at one point was managing consultant for an international development
>> practice, so I've seen just about everything...enough to where I am an
>> independent freelancer now and don't miss the rest :-)
>>
>>
>> So I have an associate who is a Flash guy, who tosses me online stores
>> to do a couple-few times a year. It's normally an informal thing, in
>> terms of him telling me what's involved in the way of anything unusual
>> with shipping, product options, the other gotchas, and I give him a price.
>>
>>
>> He comes to me with a site that had an oscommerce store and wants a new
>> site. Normal cart, nothing special. Only 18 products. Some templating. I
>> had other things on my calendar, and he needed this started right away,
>> and said he'd pay double. So I totaled it up, and quote $2500.
>>
>>
>> Not long after it started, it became obvious that there was going to be
>> trouble. His client had another consultant under hire, who had wanted
>> the store business, and in addition to being bent out of shape about not
>> getting it, managed to get inserted between the owners and my contractor
>> as a "PM". Those of you who have been PM's will appreciate 'being one'
>> yet not having a specification, not wanting the project to succeed, and
>> having nothing be your fault (when I was a PM, the responsibility for
>> everything fell on me).
>>
>>
>> But the real issue was that the store was far from normal. A short list
>> of the customizations I had to make to Ubercart include
>>
>>    -importing a csv file - column format inconsistent - containing
>> tracking information for orders, where the order had to have packaging,
>> shipment, and status automatically created and updated and an email sent
>>
>>    -automatically exporting orders as edi
>>
>>    -writing a script to import the oscommerce data
>>
>>    -custom admin reports
>>
>>    -creating an intermediary payment gateway (since Ubercart can't
>> handle two being active) to handle a special card
>>
>>    -modifying the credit system to account for the normal cards needing
>> CVV but this other card not only not having CVV but not having an
>> expiration date
>>
>>
>> I looked at all of that (by way of a 'QA' document the 'PM' sent...which
>> basically said where is this stuff?) and told him that none of this was
>> included in the 'normal store' quote. He said yeah, just do it hourly.
>>
>>
>> So we get to the end of the project, and (a) I decide not to charge him
>> double for the hourly stuff nor my expedited/out-of-hours uplift, most
>> of it having been done at night because I was putting in 12-16 hours a
>> day, (b) I even gave him a 10% courtesy discount, and the invoice BEYOND
>> the original was a bit over $7000.
>>
>>
>> He called and asked whether there wasn't something we could do about the
>> amount. I said, "yes, you can stop giving fixed-price quotes on anything
>> without a concrete spec to start with."
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
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-- 
Bryan Gruneberg
Perceptum Thought Squad
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