[Asterisk-biz] A question about ethics, I suppose

[Michael Giagnocavo]

>This is interesting reading guys. I am a consultant and find that I
>actively check out clients before I will do work for them. This is
>becoming an issue. I liked the mention of using the escrow service but
>think that it would add problems. I ask for 50% of labor and 100% of
>hardware costs and with a few bad jobs think that this is a safe way
>of weeding them out.

Even better is leaving a "secret" backdoor, that they AGREE to. Sure, if
they hire good enough people they can disable it. But at least it gives you
some level of security.

>What other than money can create problems with clients? I fired a
>client because they were priating software. They learned quickly and
>are getting back on track. What could cause stress to the consulting
>relationship?

Clear expectations, project planning, requirements. Not having these things
is a pretty good way to ensure failure. I dealt with a client that had some
great ideas, but no management powers. A really basic "requirements" doc was
passed off as a technical specification. I think that even a year after I
left the project, they are almost in the same spot, since there's no clear
expectations of what exactly has to be done. 

I know a lot of people have bashed requirements and specifications
documents, seeing them as just junk that slows you down. Yes, it takes time.
But without it, no one is quite sure what they're building. If you're
writing a 3 hour hack job, that's one thing. But anything more involved than
a day, and there has just GOT to be a clearcut expectation. Sometimes
clients don't want to pay for intangibles like a project manager. 

Specifications will change, grow, evolve. Both the client and the consultant
have to have agreed on how this will happen. The client obviously won't pay
for something that doesn't fit their needs, and the consultant obviously
isn't going to program a whole new system because the client decided that a
GTK+ interface is better than a PHP-based one.

Through experience, I've learned to be highly cautious to take on any
project not well defined, or where the client isn't willing to get into
specs and design. 

Yea, people will try to screw you out of money, and you gotta watch out for
that. But derailed nightmare projects can be much worse.

Last, but not least, check out this awesome article:
http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html

-Michael