On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 08:07:10PM +0100, Peter Corlett wrote: > > However, you're after a fixed-price job, which costs more because the > contractor is taking on the extra risk of the job going pear-shaped > for reasons outside their control. And IMO, £500 isn't enough to cover > that risk. >
I think Peter is spot on with this logic, and I'd never want to bid on a fixed price piece of work at such a small amount, the handshaking time[1] alone would be just to large a % to make it worthwhile. However it's an open market, someone out there hasn't as much risk aversion as I have or as large a mortgage payment (its not that large actually, i'm scared of risk). I personally reckon he'll get a taker, and I'm not sure either of them will be fully satisfied, but thats ok. And of course you can always suggest to Martin you'll do it for more as a counter offer. What's maybe more interesting is the value/cost people put on fixed term work vs. contracting and of course the value people put on a really good job (and what that means) and a shoddy job. And these are both topics I believe will become more significant in the next five years or so. To be honest, I'm changing my views on software development quality daily now I'm back at the cutting edge, and it really doesn't have much to do with code/frameworks/documentation. On a recent project I was shepherding, the project plan had maybe 10 tasks, yet when I was told to move onto another project, my handover task list had 22 soft tasks[2] that were all about making sure the business got what they wanted, that ratio is fairly significant given there was a full test/qa/systems allocation to the project. Greg [1] Just made up the term, the time it takes to set up any contract/deal, agree exactly what the deliverables are and set up the agreement in a strong enough (legal) way. [2] None of them on the original plan.