>Subject: Re: Please help me out. I have to get this done today
>From: "Chris Tutty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 14:43:14 +1300
>
>>"Aaron Ardiri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>> it makes you wonder how little people think about projects tho..
>> i have had people tell me that it should ONLY take a week or two
>> to write a full fledged game for the palm.. this includes QA and
>> other things..
>>
>The clients I'm getting this opinion from are basing this on the
>quotes being offered on eLance and other contract bidding
>sites. Many, many apps are quoted at three to five thousand
>dollars to full delivery. A manager that turns this into hours by
>dividing by the rate they pay for Palm programming (say US$30
>to US$50 and hour) can easily pick up the idea that a couple
>of week's work will finish most Palm apps.
1) Don't these clients understand the concept of "bait and switch".
Without a detailed specification, the quotes you get
from a brief project description have to assume the most
minimal amount of work to implement the most minimilistic
view of the requirement.
The tactic is then to jack up the project cost once the
project is awarded, and once the client finds out how little
they are getting for their little quote.
And this is the ethical approach!
The unethical approach would be to deliver something
unusable, then charge an arm and a leg to make it usable,
which is pretty much the description of the software you
identified in your e-mail.
This whole thing plays into how niave customers view the cost
of software development. In my experience, customers
unaccustomed to custom software development have no
idea how little custom coding can be acheived with a few
thousand dollars of effort.
2) Your quoted billing rate is low by a factor of 3 to 6.
Roger Stringer
Marietta Systems, Inc.
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