[Sigia-l] Pricing the Design Process (was "Testing your own sites")

[jamie foggon]

Arthur Fink:

> if I could see a hassle-free way to do so.


Ziya:

> Hmm, why is it a hassle?

If you can convince clients to pay you per hour, that's zero risk
isn't it? Lawyer's seem to think its a good way to go.

Being consistently profitable in the web industry at least is one of
the toughest challenges in my experience. Pricing on a project basis
may mean that occasionally you make more than you would if you get
paid by the hour, but more often than not unexpected twists add to the
effort (plus the sometimes huge overhead of arguing what actually
constitutes a change in scope).

It depends on the type of projects you work on, but the interactive
agency I'm at has to try and be profitable on anything from banners
(yuck) right up to huge technically complex multi-vendor projects.

We've been working on more agile based projects - for clients where we
have a high degree of trust - and the time-boxing (getting paid by the
hour) seems better in almost every respect.

- the quality of the end result is better
- the clients expectations are more realistic
- the client thinks more carefully about how important changes are
- you don't spend time arguing about scope changes
- you don't spend time producing monstrous budget estimates - just
simple resource based booking

The biggest challenge is getting clients to really understand what
agile really means. A better name would be 'rigid' in my opinion. You
really need a high level of trust, to a new client not familiar with
software development it might just look like a good way to commit to
little or nothing.



-- 
Jamie Foggon