Georg Gell wrote: > Hi everyone, > > this is a little off topic, but I am reading the symfony book atm, it > was mentioned in the book that symfony is very useful for RAD and code > refactoring, as the newer customers often change the requirements. > Technically I am quite used to RAD and I see it's advantages, but I am > working as a project manager in a large company, and I have problems > using RAD there. > The main issue is that if you don't define the exact specifications > before, you cannot give a serious quote on the amount that the project > is going to cost. And if you make it easier for the customer to change > the requirement during the realization, how can you define when the > target is reached? Meaning how can you finish a RAD project in time and > within budget, if you have no defined target, and the client can always > wish for more? > How to you guys/gals cope with this problem? How do you make the > contract, when you are going to use RAD? Is it just that you are so good > and the clients pay so well that you have never thought about it?
Well in order to really leverage the benefits from agile development, one must really build a trust relationship with the client. Otherwise you do not benefit from throwing out things not deemed useful during prototyping etc. All in all the entire fixed price model does not really apply anymore. Basically you define a budget, you define an initial scope and you keep your client in the loop. Its the PM's just to ensure that the must have's will always fit in the budget, even as you add new features and throw out others. I suggest keeping a wiki that is updated immediately as the specs evolve. One key thing to state in the contract and make very clear from the start is that client participation is key to the quality of the results. This means that the client has to budget much higher costs on his side, since he has to make sure that all the relevant people have sufficient amount of time to provide feedback. As a result the overall turnover for you is much reduced with agile development. The project is usually shorter, client involvement means less work for you. On the up side you obviously deliver faster, making the chances better that your client will rake in nice profits that he will probably like to reinvest partially into your services. Oh and if you are not willing to provide the services, others will. So you dont really have a choice these days. regards, Lukas --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "symfony users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/symfony-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
