[thelist] pricing for web sites?

[Martin Burns]

On 23 Sep 2009, at 01:18, Paul Bennett wrote:

> I choose to fixed price on an agreed set of deliverables. Clients love
> it (no surprises) and so do the companies who use me as an on-call
> developer resource (easy to budget for development resource when you
> know the cost up-front).

Yep - if you can nail down the scope and be iron-hard about it, then  
Fixed Price is a great way to go; it's by far the least risky for  
clients *who know what they want/need*.

But, you absolutely *have* to stop yourself 'being helpful' and doing  
stuff that's not in that defined scope; behaving as a consultant on a  
delivery project is a direct route to losing money.

> In my experience, "I though I told you... moments can be avoided by
> drafting up a set of requirements and agreed deliverables before you
> begin and getting it signed off by both parties - any wise  
> professional
> will do that and those that don't will likely be burnt soon enough.

Mind you, that also depends on having mature clients; I once had a  
particularly immature one (personally and as an organisation) who  
confused what had been discussed as things that *could* be done in the  
sales process, with what had been agreed as things that *would* be  
done in the final contract. And despite me having done a scope  
verification workshop on day 1 of the project (never A Bad Thing ime)  
and having the scope confirmed and signed off in writing by the  
individual, they still pulled out all the threats when later on, other  
fun stuff was not included in the go-live scope.

> Discussions about extra features etc can be handled by "that's not in
> scope for this phase, but I'm happy to discuss this once the project /
> site / application is completed".


Or, if you have the capacity to do so, "That's not currently in scope,  
but let's explore that in the context of a Change Request, and if we  
agree that it's A Good Thing (with all impacts to cost, timeline,  
quality etc updated), then we'll bring it in".

Say, that reminds me:
http://evolt.org/change-requests


Cheers
Martin
(who must get round to writing a pricing article as it's now part of  
his job :-) )
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