Re: Consultants ...
Life is a learning experience. If you lived though ti you are better because of it. On 2023-03-16 12:54, Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss wrote: The work is done, though -- LOL ... Did I just short myself a few hundred dollars? -- Thanks, Alex. On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:23 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss wrote: Those sorts of things you typically would want to do as some sort of Statement of Work (SOW) you build based on some consulting or at least a good grilling session to pick out what they have, what they want, and determine how long you'd need to do it, complete with contingencies. You could do it as a fixed-price and scope, but those never work out well for you mostly, as you'll get caught up in customer BS in just getting straight answers out of most. If you have a nice, clearly defined template of what the customer needs to provide, including a full list of up-front needs as deliverables, but for either you need to be sure you can get in and out as quickly as you say you can, or both sides will end up losing in the deal. Even if inside your head you just expect them to give you information or *just* create some accounts, you never know what sort of politics and drama you might encounter to delay things. Go work for a 50+ year old company and see how long anything can possibly take, possibly weeks/months. Best thing you can do is make a timeline as a literal project. I use MS Project to do so (one of the two M$ apps I love, aside from Visio), breaking out each and every action, request, receipt of request fulfillment, deployments, validations, dependencies, the whole works, including both reasonable timelines for completion. This then provides you a visible project timeline in the form of a Gantt chart even, but you can start with a baseline to then go and provide a list of every request up front to a customer, and let them determine how long they can fulfill each, then you can adjust your SOW, project, and timeline (and project costs) accordingly. ProjectLibre is OSS and also works as well, plus various online project saas' now, all come with some learning curve, but one more folks in the industry should know. If the customer then delays you and thus the project unexpectedly outside your projected and documented timeline, your Statement of Work of course will (ahem, should) define and necessitate use of Change Orders they are responsible for in terms of overage costs and know that up front as projections were made on their direct input. If you did a fixed-bid project, you are thus screwed and eat their delay for whatever reasons. Case in point, my last customer we had a project on the table to move various management services to Okta SSO for same reasons, but the IAM team was a mess that ran it with people coming and quitting as quick, and was in works for 7 months before I finally ran away from the mess, leaving it for their team and some other poor bastard to get around to implementing my documented requests eventually. At least it was all billable hours as staff aug more than pure consulting, so as they sat on their thumbs, I just went and did other work. It was the same there for a major network tool they purchased I worked on trying to get ServiceNow integration and Okta between teams. A week long project could easily become a 6mo to year long thing in some messes of organizations when consulting... -mb On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:43 AM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss wrote: To all those who have done contracted technology consulting ... what do you charge? I've been doing work on the side for a local HVAC company, largely technology administration stuff ... simple stuff ... setup website hosting, DNS, setup laptops when they need ... nothing terribly hard or time consuming. Recently I've grown frustrated with all the manual steps involved with setting up a new user account ... Google/M365/LastPass/Adobe ... so I decided to dig in for a bit and enable domain federation (SAML/SSO) on them. To my utter delight, it worked and was fast easier to set up than I initially thought. Now, when i create a new account in Google, an account will be automatically provisioned in both LastPass and M365, hooray! In going to queen on the same for Adobe DC later today. My question is ... what do I charge for this? What's reasonable? I'm already fairly technically inclined, so it wasn't that difficult for me to read the instructions and follow along ... but there was a fair bit of PowerShell scripting required on the M365 part, as that work could only be done with PowerShell using the AzureAD & MSOnline modules. I appreciate your input, as this level of work for a customer is a first for me. Thanks, Alexander Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S22+ --- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss -
Re: Consultants ...
Yes!! All good points Micheal!! On 2023-03-16 12:22, Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss wrote: Those sorts of things you typically would want to do as some sort of Statement of Work (SOW) you build based on some consulting or at least a good grilling session to pick out what they have, what they want, and determine how long you'd need to do it, complete with contingencies. You could do it as a fixed-price and scope, but those never work out well for you mostly, as you'll get caught up in customer BS in just getting straight answers out of most. If you have a nice, clearly defined template of what the customer needs to provide, including a full list of up-front needs as deliverables, but for either you need to be sure you can get in and out as quickly as you say you can, or both sides will end up losing in the deal. Even if inside your head you just expect them to give you information or *just* create some accounts, you never know what sort of politics and drama you might encounter to delay things. Go work for a 50+ year old company and see how long anything can possibly take, possibly weeks/months. Best thing you can do is make a timeline as a literal project. I use MS Project to do so (one of the two M$ apps I love, aside from Visio), breaking out each and every action, request, receipt of request fulfillment, deployments, validations, dependencies, the whole works, including both reasonable timelines for completion. This then provides you a visible project timeline in the form of a Gantt chart even, but you can start with a baseline to then go and provide a list of every request up front to a customer, and let them determine how long they can fulfill each, then you can adjust your SOW, project, and timeline (and project costs) accordingly. ProjectLibre is OSS and also works as well, plus various online project saas' now, all come with some learning curve, but one more folks in the industry should know. If the customer then delays you and thus the project unexpectedly outside your projected and documented timeline, your Statement of Work of course will (ahem, should) define and necessitate use of Change Orders they are responsible for in terms of overage costs and know that up front as projections were made on their direct input. If you did a fixed-bid project, you are thus screwed and eat their delay for whatever reasons. Case in point, my last customer we had a project on the table to move various management services to Okta SSO for same reasons, but the IAM team was a mess that ran it with people coming and quitting as quick, and was in works for 7 months before I finally ran away from the mess, leaving it for their team and some other poor bastard to get around to implementing my documented requests eventually. At least it was all billable hours as staff aug more than pure consulting, so as they sat on their thumbs, I just went and did other work. It was the same there for a major network tool they purchased I worked on trying to get ServiceNow integration and Okta between teams. A week long project could easily become a 6mo to year long thing in some messes of organizations when consulting... -mb On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:43 AM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss wrote: To all those who have done contracted technology consulting ... what do you charge? I've been doing work on the side for a local HVAC company, largely technology administration stuff ... simple stuff ... setup website hosting, DNS, setup laptops when they need ... nothing terribly hard or time consuming. Recently I've grown frustrated with all the manual steps involved with setting up a new user account ... Google/M365/LastPass/Adobe ... so I decided to dig in for a bit and enable domain federation (SAML/SSO) on them. To my utter delight, it worked and was fast easier to set up than I initially thought. Now, when i create a new account in Google, an account will be automatically provisioned in both LastPass and M365, hooray! In going to queen on the same for Adobe DC later today. My question is ... what do I charge for this? What's reasonable? I'm already fairly technically inclined, so it wasn't that difficult for me to read the instructions and follow along ... but there was a fair bit of PowerShell scripting required on the M365 part, as that work could only be done with PowerShell using the AzureAD & MSOnline modules. I appreciate your input, as this level of work for a customer is a first for me. Thanks, Alexander Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S22+ --- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
Re: Consultants ...
I have not done any freelance work in a long time... maybe 10 years. At that point I was charging $75 an hour. Most who contacted me wanted to pay me much less. I was at capacity at $75/hr in 2008. Today I would charge over $125/hr. I am a PHP developer. I have a friend who owns a data center and provides hosting services. For Linux admin and programming he charges $130 an hour. Made friends with a freelance WordPress developer and he told me he charges $250/hr. There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a rate. Sometimes it is just nice to take on a few side projects for cheep to retire debt etc. When I started freelancing in 2008 I decided $75/hr was reasonable because of the haste factor. I wrote an article about this several years ago : https://www.phpprogrammer.org/freelance-php-developer-hourly-rate One key point is you need to factor in you administrative time as a cost of doing business. I'd be interested in any feedback on my article. Keith On 2023-03-16 10:42, Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss wrote: To all those who have done contracted technology consulting ... what do you charge? I've been doing work on the side for a local HVAC company, largely technology administration stuff ... simple stuff ... setup website hosting, DNS, setup laptops when they need ... nothing terribly hard or time consuming. Recently I've grown frustrated with all the manual steps involved with setting up a new user account ... Google/M365/LastPass/Adobe ... so I decided to dig in for a bit and enable domain federation (SAML/SSO) on them. To my utter delight, it worked and was fast easier to set up than I initially thought. Now, when i create a new account in Google, an account will be automatically provisioned in both LastPass and M365, hooray! In going to queen on the same for Adobe DC later today. My question is ... what do I charge for this? What's reasonable? I'm already fairly technically inclined, so it wasn't that difficult for me to read the instructions and follow along ... but there was a fair bit of PowerShell scripting required on the M365 part, as that work could only be done with PowerShell using the AzureAD & MSOnline modules. I appreciate your input, as this level of work for a customer is a first for me. Thanks, Alexander Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S22+ --- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
Re: Consultants ...
Well, figure your rough time doing so, pick an hourly rate, and let that determine your number. All any consultant does really. If they can't afford it, they probably shouldn't be doing business, or tell them you need a new AC unit for the summer. I misread your ask, I was thinking you meant to do this as something more repeatable beyond this gig, ie. doing it for other customers. I see jokers pay a lot more than you'll likely charge for worse integration it sounds like, so why not. And if repeatable, you probably should, then see my tl:dr. :) -mb On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:54 PM Snyder, Alexander J < alexan...@snyderfamily.co> wrote: > The work is done, though -- LOL ... Did I just short myself a few hundred > dollars? > -- > Thanks, > Alex. > > > > > On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:23 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss < > plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > >> Those sorts of things you typically would want to do as some sort of >> Statement of Work (SOW) you build based on some consulting or at least a >> good grilling session to pick out what they have, what they want, and >> determine how long you'd need to do it, complete with contingencies. You >> could do it as a fixed-price and scope, but those never work out well for >> you mostly, as you'll get caught up in customer BS in just getting straight >> answers out of most. If you have a nice, clearly defined template of what >> the customer needs to provide, including a full list of up-front needs as >> deliverables, but for either you need to be sure you can get in and out as >> quickly as you say you can, or both sides will end up losing in the deal. >> >> Even if inside your head you just expect them to give you information or >> *just* create some accounts, you never know what sort of politics and drama >> you might encounter to delay things. Go work for a 50+ year old company >> and see how long anything can possibly take, possibly weeks/months. >> >> Best thing you can do is make a timeline as a literal project. I use MS >> Project to do so (one of the two M$ apps I love, aside from Visio), >> breaking out each and every action, request, receipt of request >> fulfillment, deployments, validations, dependencies, the whole works, >> including both reasonable timelines for completion. This then provides you >> a visible project timeline in the form of a Gantt chart even, but you can >> start with a baseline to then go and provide a list of every request up >> front to a customer, and let them determine how long they can fulfill each, >> then you can adjust your SOW, project, and timeline (and project costs) >> accordingly. ProjectLibre is OSS and also works as well, plus various >> online project saas' now, all come with some learning curve, but one more >> folks in the industry *should* know. >> >> If the customer then delays you and thus the project unexpectedly outside >> your projected and documented timeline, your Statement of Work of course >> will (ahem, *should*) define and necessitate use of Change Orders they >> are responsible for in terms of overage costs and know that up front as >> projections were made on their direct input. If you did a fixed-bid >> project, you are thus screwed and eat their delay for whatever reasons. >> >> Case in point, my last customer we had a project on the table to move >> various management services to Okta SSO for same reasons, but the IAM team >> was a mess that ran it with people coming and quitting as quick, and was in >> works for 7 months before I finally ran away from the mess, leaving it for >> their team and some other poor bastard to get around to implementing my >> documented requests eventually. At least it was all billable hours as >> staff aug more than pure consulting, so as they sat on their thumbs, I just >> went and did other work. It was the same there for a major network tool >> they purchased I worked on trying to get ServiceNow integration and Okta >> between teams. A week long project could easily become a 6mo to year long >> thing in some messes of organizations when consulting... >> >> -mb >> >> >> >> On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:43 AM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss < >> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: >> >>> To all those who have done contracted technology consulting ... what do >>> you charge? >>> >>> I've been doing work on the side for a local HVAC company, largely >>> technology administration stuff ... simple stuff ... setup website hosting, >>> DNS, setup laptops when they need ... nothing terribly hard or time >>> consuming. >>> >>> Recently I've grown frustrated with all the manual steps involved with >>> setting up a new user account ... Google/M365/LastPass/Adobe ... so I >>> decided to dig in for a bit and enable domain federation (SAML/SSO) on them. >>> >>> To my utter delight, it worked and was fast easier to set up than I >>> initially thought. >>> >>> Now, when i create a new account in Google, an account will be >>> automatically pr
Re: Consultants ...
The work is done, though -- LOL ... Did I just short myself a few hundred dollars? -- Thanks, Alex. On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:23 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss < plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > Those sorts of things you typically would want to do as some sort of > Statement of Work (SOW) you build based on some consulting or at least a > good grilling session to pick out what they have, what they want, and > determine how long you'd need to do it, complete with contingencies. You > could do it as a fixed-price and scope, but those never work out well for > you mostly, as you'll get caught up in customer BS in just getting straight > answers out of most. If you have a nice, clearly defined template of what > the customer needs to provide, including a full list of up-front needs as > deliverables, but for either you need to be sure you can get in and out as > quickly as you say you can, or both sides will end up losing in the deal. > > Even if inside your head you just expect them to give you information or > *just* create some accounts, you never know what sort of politics and drama > you might encounter to delay things. Go work for a 50+ year old company > and see how long anything can possibly take, possibly weeks/months. > > Best thing you can do is make a timeline as a literal project. I use MS > Project to do so (one of the two M$ apps I love, aside from Visio), > breaking out each and every action, request, receipt of request > fulfillment, deployments, validations, dependencies, the whole works, > including both reasonable timelines for completion. This then provides you > a visible project timeline in the form of a Gantt chart even, but you can > start with a baseline to then go and provide a list of every request up > front to a customer, and let them determine how long they can fulfill each, > then you can adjust your SOW, project, and timeline (and project costs) > accordingly. ProjectLibre is OSS and also works as well, plus various > online project saas' now, all come with some learning curve, but one more > folks in the industry *should* know. > > If the customer then delays you and thus the project unexpectedly outside > your projected and documented timeline, your Statement of Work of course > will (ahem, *should*) define and necessitate use of Change Orders they > are responsible for in terms of overage costs and know that up front as > projections were made on their direct input. If you did a fixed-bid > project, you are thus screwed and eat their delay for whatever reasons. > > Case in point, my last customer we had a project on the table to move > various management services to Okta SSO for same reasons, but the IAM team > was a mess that ran it with people coming and quitting as quick, and was in > works for 7 months before I finally ran away from the mess, leaving it for > their team and some other poor bastard to get around to implementing my > documented requests eventually. At least it was all billable hours as > staff aug more than pure consulting, so as they sat on their thumbs, I just > went and did other work. It was the same there for a major network tool > they purchased I worked on trying to get ServiceNow integration and Okta > between teams. A week long project could easily become a 6mo to year long > thing in some messes of organizations when consulting... > > -mb > > > > On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:43 AM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss < > plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > >> To all those who have done contracted technology consulting ... what do >> you charge? >> >> I've been doing work on the side for a local HVAC company, largely >> technology administration stuff ... simple stuff ... setup website hosting, >> DNS, setup laptops when they need ... nothing terribly hard or time >> consuming. >> >> Recently I've grown frustrated with all the manual steps involved with >> setting up a new user account ... Google/M365/LastPass/Adobe ... so I >> decided to dig in for a bit and enable domain federation (SAML/SSO) on them. >> >> To my utter delight, it worked and was fast easier to set up than I >> initially thought. >> >> Now, when i create a new account in Google, an account will be >> automatically provisioned in both LastPass and M365, hooray! In going to >> queen on the same for Adobe DC later today. >> >> My question is ... what do I charge for this? What's reasonable? I'm >> already fairly technically inclined, so it wasn't that difficult for me to >> read the instructions and follow along ... but there was a fair bit of >> PowerShell scripting required on the M365 part, as that work could only be >> done with PowerShell using the AzureAD & MSOnline modules. >> >> I appreciate your input, as this level of work for a customer is a first >> for me. >> >> Thanks, >> Alexander >> >> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S22+ >> --- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >>
Re: Consultants ...
Those sorts of things you typically would want to do as some sort of Statement of Work (SOW) you build based on some consulting or at least a good grilling session to pick out what they have, what they want, and determine how long you'd need to do it, complete with contingencies. You could do it as a fixed-price and scope, but those never work out well for you mostly, as you'll get caught up in customer BS in just getting straight answers out of most. If you have a nice, clearly defined template of what the customer needs to provide, including a full list of up-front needs as deliverables, but for either you need to be sure you can get in and out as quickly as you say you can, or both sides will end up losing in the deal. Even if inside your head you just expect them to give you information or *just* create some accounts, you never know what sort of politics and drama you might encounter to delay things. Go work for a 50+ year old company and see how long anything can possibly take, possibly weeks/months. Best thing you can do is make a timeline as a literal project. I use MS Project to do so (one of the two M$ apps I love, aside from Visio), breaking out each and every action, request, receipt of request fulfillment, deployments, validations, dependencies, the whole works, including both reasonable timelines for completion. This then provides you a visible project timeline in the form of a Gantt chart even, but you can start with a baseline to then go and provide a list of every request up front to a customer, and let them determine how long they can fulfill each, then you can adjust your SOW, project, and timeline (and project costs) accordingly. ProjectLibre is OSS and also works as well, plus various online project saas' now, all come with some learning curve, but one more folks in the industry *should* know. If the customer then delays you and thus the project unexpectedly outside your projected and documented timeline, your Statement of Work of course will (ahem, *should*) define and necessitate use of Change Orders they are responsible for in terms of overage costs and know that up front as projections were made on their direct input. If you did a fixed-bid project, you are thus screwed and eat their delay for whatever reasons. Case in point, my last customer we had a project on the table to move various management services to Okta SSO for same reasons, but the IAM team was a mess that ran it with people coming and quitting as quick, and was in works for 7 months before I finally ran away from the mess, leaving it for their team and some other poor bastard to get around to implementing my documented requests eventually. At least it was all billable hours as staff aug more than pure consulting, so as they sat on their thumbs, I just went and did other work. It was the same there for a major network tool they purchased I worked on trying to get ServiceNow integration and Okta between teams. A week long project could easily become a 6mo to year long thing in some messes of organizations when consulting... -mb On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:43 AM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss < plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > To all those who have done contracted technology consulting ... what do > you charge? > > I've been doing work on the side for a local HVAC company, largely > technology administration stuff ... simple stuff ... setup website hosting, > DNS, setup laptops when they need ... nothing terribly hard or time > consuming. > > Recently I've grown frustrated with all the manual steps involved with > setting up a new user account ... Google/M365/LastPass/Adobe ... so I > decided to dig in for a bit and enable domain federation (SAML/SSO) on them. > > To my utter delight, it worked and was fast easier to set up than I > initially thought. > > Now, when i create a new account in Google, an account will be > automatically provisioned in both LastPass and M365, hooray! In going to > queen on the same for Adobe DC later today. > > My question is ... what do I charge for this? What's reasonable? I'm > already fairly technically inclined, so it wasn't that difficult for me to > read the instructions and follow along ... but there was a fair bit of > PowerShell scripting required on the M365 part, as that work could only be > done with PowerShell using the AzureAD & MSOnline modules. > > I appreciate your input, as this level of work for a customer is a first > for me. > > Thanks, > Alexander > > Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S22+ > --- > PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > --- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discus
