[thelist] databse reodrs limited and servers

[Martin Paul Burns]

Andrew

The thing to pitch is a design/requirements phase. This *should* be
chargable work, or you can price it as 'refundable if you go with us to
build the system' and ensure that your build price funds the time taken to
define the requirements.

Pitching requirements phases is an essential part of doing a professional
job - the client needs to be able to understand that they won't get an
appropriate solution without the proper time spent designing it, part of
which is defining tight requirements.

>From the client's perspective, this will then support:
1) A *realistic* price, spec and project plan for build and launch
2) A spec that is more detailed and therefore easier to manage the scope
of, from both the client's side and the builders. You can then put in place
a change control process to evaluate and cost the (inevitable) changes in
scope.
2) The possibility of choosing the best supplier for each of design and
build - of course, because you've developed the requirements, and offered
it on a 'refundable' basis, the client will tend to go with you to do the
build as well if you're up to it.
3) A clean basis for the invoice schedule (ie X% on commencement, Y% on
delivery of requirements, Z% on delivery of system)

Cheers
Martin




ok this makes sense and its what I want to hear.  So how do I put a quote
in on
project that basically needs to be piloted?

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Jerry Scannell
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 14:56
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] databse reodrs limited and servers


Andrew,

It is going to be impossible for anyone of us (or you for that matter) to
recommend a database engine, web server environment, programming language,
or anything until the requirements of the project are properly defined.
That's why the pre-design phase is so important.  Requirements gathering
can
sometime take almost as long as the development phase - because the science
of rqmts. management is so misunderstood.

How can you decide what to use until you really know what the parameters
and
limits of the system are??