[consulting] Failed Outsourcing Job

[Andrew Hawks]

A lot of timeless lessons to be learned from this age-old situation:

1. As a client you get what you pay for. As a contractor you pay for what
you get.
2. As both contractor and client, protect yourself with a good contract.
Have all contracts reviewed by your lawyer.
3. As a contractor, take on work you have the time, skill, dedication and
passion to complete. As a client, seek out work you have the time, skill,
budget and passion to manage.
4. The first step determines the journey's course. Communicating all known
and potential/perceived requirements, goals, use cases, and priorities is
essential especially on fixed-bid work. As client or product owner it's
your responsible to communicate everything you know up front, as contractor
it's your responsibility to flush out what the product owner knows, doesn't
know, and the things they don't know that they don't know.
5. Keep communicating daily to further eliminate risk on both sides. Set
and reset expectations daily as needed.
6. Bugs, issues, and unexpected unknowns are the rule, not the exception,
in all software development. Plan accordingly.
7. Be cool and do good. As client and contractor give each other the tools,
knowledge, attitude, and final results each other needs to be successful.

When a project stalls at 80-85% (#6) it's a result of a difference in
understanding in #4 that hasn't been backed up by #5. As the client you
have the power to turn that around at every moment. If you seek out a
different developer, this is now a very damaged project no one would really
/want/ to work on, and that will add time and cost. As the contractor you
knew this would be challenge, and you know you wanted the challenge. Rise
up to that challenge, get it done, and present a product you're proud of.
Get on the same page, figure out what each other needs to reach 100%
complete with a smile on both faces.

In the future, there are many professional companies whose primary focus is
custom Drupal theme development from PSD comps with 2-3 day turnaround
which can do the job in your price range with functionality like dropdown
menus.


 *Andrew Hawks* | *Tech Lead, **CivicActions*
Denver, Colorado, USA
e: andy at civicactions.com | h: 303.953.1303
skype: andyhawks | http://civicactions.com
[image: LinkedIn] <http://linkedin.com/in/andyhawks> [image:
Doodle.com]<http://doodle.com/andyhawks>


On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 6:25 AM, Fred Jones <fredthejonester at gmail.com>wrote:

> A question of legality and ethics: I hired an outsourcer (from
> freelancer.com) to make a D7 theme. The deal was crystal clear that he
> has until the deadline to finish it 100% or I pay nothing and he
> agreed to that.
>
> He has done about 80-85% of it but no more than that. So I will not
> pay him and that's that.
>
> But he put in download links on the Appearance page and so I
> downloaded his work and I have it. I could now finish it myself and
> hire another person to finish it and pay them $100 instead of the $500
> that he was supposed to get.
>
> Question is should I just take it and run because we never clarified
> who owns anything and he *did* make it downloadable. Or perhaps I
> should tell him that I will pay him $100 and take his code and if he
> accepts, then OK.
>
> I don't want to continue with him because he clearly can not finish
> the job--he keeps asking me to review it and the dropdown menus are
> wrong each time plus 30 other details that he just can't get right.
>
> Thanks for any thoughts.
>
> Fred
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>
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