[Sigia-l] office redesign (was: Nielsen: It's the end! (long))

[Skot Nelson]

On Oct-17-2005, at 5:40 PM, Bruce Morrison wrote:

> In my experience I know that you have to spend time "educating"  
> clients
> but surely this is something that is built into your fee structure?

As someone who has both sold and purchased these services, it should be.

You'd better not bill me for an hour and tell me you were educating  
me, unless we explicitly arranged for it in advance. It'll probably  
just be perceived by me as you padding your bills.

On the other hand I also always resented when developers used to bill  
me hourly for their internal project manager. I always figured I (or  
someone on my side) was managing the project, and why is it my  
problem that you need a dedicated PM to manage your team? If you do,  
build the hours into the developer time. (I was less averse to firms  
that built a flat percentage on top for project management, as I  
recognize the need but my real issue was assuming the risk that the  
developer would manage the project badly.)

In my experience, people who've only worked "supply side" tend to  
disagree with both of my statements above; as I say, I've been both  
sides of the equation and this is somewhat based on my perceptions  
from the "client side" of things.

> I'm curious to know if this is a common practise in the industry (the
> free education not the going out of business ;).

Too much of the former often leads to the latter.
--
Scott Nelson
skot at penguinstorm.com
http://www.penguinstorm.com/