If you approach us, we will do a small amount of work, then quote for it and if you accept our quote, we will invoice you. If no payment is forthcoming, we will own the software and close the account.
Below is our method.
Most small businesses have tiny budgets especially for hi-tech services like ours so we end up quoting a price for a limited cookie-cutter product and then add-ons to get the final solution. Managing changes and modifications snow-balls very easily to the point where the job will be stopped due to cost overrun. One size fits all simplifies the project! Custom products are too costly for small companies.
We have a strict process: specification then quote with change management.
A meeting or written agreement is necessary to clear up details before we start do number-crunching to come up with a figure.
We limit the time spent on collecting information to 2 days.
Once the specification is signed off, we will then get back to you with a quote, so you can see if the price is in your range. We will keep the stage by stage detail to ourselves to save confusion and trading our quote against other people's quotes as has been done before to our detriment.
If you agree to the quote, we both sign a non-disclosure agreement which we have written before we start to protect copyright and business information on both sides. If the information gets out by giving it to another developer, we will no longer support the software or charge for correction.
A non-refundable deposit must be paid before we will start to stop people endlessly putting off starting. If there are delays paying the final amount, we will charge interest.
The project is extended or modified using change management, quoting for the change and agreeing with the customer to start.
To do the Website, the customer can contact us using the form above or email us the content in Word, text or PDF format plus images (JPG or GIF zipped). They can also post us the images and files on CDROM, DVD or floppy. We can do the rest over the Internet without visiting the customer's site! Often though due to customer delays, we find a site visit often spurs the job on.
On request, we will deliver a backup to the customer of the final software and data structures on CD via mail.
Technical support requires troubleshooting so we need to ask you questions or investigate via a visit or remote assistance to see what the problem is and fix it. We charge by the hour. We will give you a ballpark figure. We can liaise with the manufacturer's call centre or Website to get appropriate support on behalf of the customer. If there is no progress to a start date, we will stop and not charge.
Project management is part of Web portals and technical support jobs. We document all the details and create a plan to complete the job. This may require a visit, communications or using our project management system to manage the details and create a solution. We charge by the hour and will give a ballpark in our quote. There is high worth in systematic project management and even if the customer refuses to let us be the overall project manager we still micromanage our own end so the customer cannot overrun us with feature creep and to allow us to stop the job if project costs overrun despite warnings. If there is no payment, there is no further work done and the account is closed.
Software requires a specification which we use our project management system to capture and massage. If there is complexity we use agile development process to keep ahead of incremental changes. This is all done at our end as the customer usually underestimates the value of methodology. We carry the load on this as it is well worth our effort doing it even if we chip in a little to get the project going.
We write technical documentation such as functional specifications, software design specifications, user manuals, technical articles and setup manuals. We require the editor or author to keep in touch so we can work with them. Usually it is all done remotely and the final documents and proofs are all done via email using Word, PDF or HTML. We also use inhouse content management systems in which to store documentation for easy update and display internally and to be able to generate customer documentation in various formats on-demand.
If there is extra software and hardware needed to edit the document offsite, we will charge a usage fee to cover our overheads and either purchase or lease the hardware and software to read and edit the document and write our own software to process the index, meta data and change control to track whether the book is OK or not.
WWWalker Web Development Pty Ltd
ACN 088 959 086
ABN 34 088 959 086.
Created: 26 Oct 2005 15:33
Last Updated: 24 Sep 2008 20:27