Hi.
This should possibly go into General, but I am trying to be professional and look at this from a professional perspective.
I am writing a bespoke piece of software for the client.
I insisted on a good spec upfront, having not received it, I have not agreed on a fixed-price contract, but instead a I am charging on daily basis.
I have been working hard with them to produce a stable specification to begin with, yet they insist on developing prototype/proof-of-concept code. I made it very clear that any changes to this area will be more costly/time-consuming once the code is already written.
After doing this for one of the areas they (unsurprisingly to me) need some changes, which basically means a rewrite of this area, which cost them (and earned me) about two weeks of billable time.
What puzzles me even further is that they still think that they can stick to the original timeline and features and budget!
While I've lost some of the original faith in the architectural skills, to me it does not require any special niche skills to understand that if your project slips by two weeks then everything that is due after also slips.
On one hand, I am relatively happy invoicing and coding the same stuff all over again (it also gives me very tangible deliverables should things go sour) but ideally I'd like to see the project completed, in a timely fashion, as I already have another contract lined up in Autumn.
Should I go a step further and communicate my concerns more loudly - in all my meetings with them, I am already quite vocal about the lack of a stable spec and shifting priorities, but perhaps I should speak more to them about the consequences - to me they sound obvious, but perhaps that simple conclusion has not transpired to them yet?
This should possibly go into General, but I am trying to be professional and look at this from a professional perspective.
I am writing a bespoke piece of software for the client.
I insisted on a good spec upfront, having not received it, I have not agreed on a fixed-price contract, but instead a I am charging on daily basis.
I have been working hard with them to produce a stable specification to begin with, yet they insist on developing prototype/proof-of-concept code. I made it very clear that any changes to this area will be more costly/time-consuming once the code is already written.
After doing this for one of the areas they (unsurprisingly to me) need some changes, which basically means a rewrite of this area, which cost them (and earned me) about two weeks of billable time.
What puzzles me even further is that they still think that they can stick to the original timeline and features and budget!
While I've lost some of the original faith in the architectural skills, to me it does not require any special niche skills to understand that if your project slips by two weeks then everything that is due after also slips.
On one hand, I am relatively happy invoicing and coding the same stuff all over again (it also gives me very tangible deliverables should things go sour) but ideally I'd like to see the project completed, in a timely fashion, as I already have another contract lined up in Autumn.
Should I go a step further and communicate my concerns more loudly - in all my meetings with them, I am already quite vocal about the lack of a stable spec and shifting priorities, but perhaps I should speak more to them about the consequences - to me they sound obvious, but perhaps that simple conclusion has not transpired to them yet?
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