Shachar Shakoof. Well put. I personally would tell the customer hasta la vista
danny -- Danny Lieberman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.software.co.il/wordpress - Danny on data security Twitter: http://twitter.com/onlyjazz 2009/8/13 Shachar Shemesh <shac...@shemesh.biz> > sammy ominsky wrote: > > On 13/08/2009, at 09:04, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote: > > The customer is looking for someone who can a commit to doing the board > bring-up process, write the BSP and set up a BusyBox distribution with Qt > libraries within five weeks, with significant penalties for late delivery. > > > Are there significant bonuses for early delivery? > > Without knowing the details, or anything else about the project or the > client, here is what my experience says will happen to anyone brave enough > to submit a quote. This typifies my belief that some clients put up "money > saving" requirements that end up shooting themselves in the foot. > > The client is, likely, working under the following constraints: > > - They just received the devices from manufacturing, and need to have > the board brought up as soon as possible > - They are living under an external deadline. They cannot extend the > five weeks deadline because it is a deadline to them. This is either a > similar contract with their customer, or an investor who is impatient to > see > whether he wants to pull his money, or any such similar circumstances. > - Engineer looks at the task to be done, says "well, 90% of it is just > duplicating what has already been done for the Freescale development board, > so it shouldn't be a problem". > - Client then says "hey! let's outsource the risk instead of just the > work". > > Any reasonable contractor will perform the following calculation: > > - There are a huge number of unknowns about this work. You can never > tell how much is "based closely", or what horrendous bugs you will find in > the drivers once you start. I was once involved in a project (along with > TkOS) where the board was "based closely" on the versatile platform. The > project was a 9 months project that included a lot more than merely > bringing > up the board, but seven months into the project "board bringup" tasks were > still being performed. > - As a contractor, if I'm going to accept the client's risks, I need to > be rewarded. In statistical terms, the expected value must be positive. If > the project is at a loss if I am late, it must be really really profitable > if I'm on time, or else there is no point in taking it up to begin with. > > As a result, the quote is typically high. Very high. In addition, the > contractor obviously states that all times are from the point where an order > is issued. > > The client is surprised. They usually don't understand that it was their > penalty requirements that drove the price up. After all, this is supposed to > be a simple project, merely performing adaptations to an already brought up > platform, over in five weeks. As a result, it takes a few days, maybe even a > week, to approve the quote (usually demanding that the price become lower). > As far as the contractor is concerned, this week is not counted toward the > delivery date, but since the client is constrained by external deadlines, as > far as they are concerned, it does. The result is that the project is late, > the client AND the contractor start disgruntled at the other side's > "unreasonable behavior", and all sides lose. > > Here is what could have been done to make things better. The client issues > a request for a project at cost+, asking for a discount on the hourly rate > in exchange for a significant bonus in case the project is delivered on > time. Mathematically speaking, this offer is identical to the above offer, > but as it is phrased in positive rather than negative terms, it is much > easier to approve. This, of course, means that it can start much earlier, > and have a better chance of succeeding. > > Shachar > > -- > Shachar Shemesh > Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.http://www.lingnu.com > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-il mailing list > Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il > >
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