[thelist] how do you manage/respond?

[Martin Burns]

On 29 May 2009, at 19:12, Bob Meetin wrote:

> Business owner wants to convert his current website into an eCommerce
> system. I am charging by the hour, so this part is fine. Unfortunately
> other than pointing me to a similar type website he did not want to go
> into specific requirements.

Right, you can't do this without requirements, so if the customer  
won't give you any, you tell the customer what they are. And give them  
opportunity to challenge at that stage - it's a really useful way of  
driving out their thinking.

> In addition to me becoming a personal assistant, as they start to
> populate the cart they come up with a variety of pricing/quantity  
> needs
> that can only be described as unique/custom.


So having defined requirements earlier, you're into change control  
territory. Every time the customer comes up with a new requirement,  
you simply work out what it would cost to implement (in terms of cost  
*and* schedule (and risk to anything else you're doing)), and check  
that they're happy to proceed with it. Once they start getting an idea  
of the impact of their ideas, they may well slow down the flow of them  
(and do some serious thinking about whether any given one is worth the  
money).

But hey, you're on T&M, so as long as you've got the ongoing scope  
changes documented as being agreed to, you're contractually covered.

Cheers
Martin

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