Does Your Business Really Need a Flying Elephant?
Illustration by Dwight K. Schrute - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibadatqayyum/ Let’s say a team of top scientists, who’ve been dedicated to the creation of the world’s most amazing new technology for the past twenty years, have finally released their brand-new invention to the world: a flying elephant! The media jumps all over the story. The early adopters rush out to buy, tame and dissect their very own flying elephants, and then... Read More
Best-of-Breed vs. All-in-One Software
You are going to create a new website for your organization. You want to have some pretty great functionality – a wiki, forums, an internal search engine, a blog. Maybe some e-commerce too. You want a CMS so you can update content yourself. But you also want different people to manage different sections, and editors should be limited in what they can edit. And, obviously, the website’s design should be consistent throughout. You get proposals... Read More
Fixed Price or Hourly: Is There a Better Way?
Previously we discussed the pros and cons of fixed price vs. hourly contracts. We followed up with a discussion about the difficulty of estimation, the importance of setting a “least acceptable outcome”, and budgeting well above that point. To recap: Fixed price contracts provide clients with the illusion of budget clarity, but at the cost of inflexibility. Hourly arrangements seem ideal… for the agency. After all, the longer... Read More
Be An Airline Pilot, Not An Astronaut
Is your project like sending a rocket ship to the moon, requiring even the tiniest detail to be specified exactly up front? Or is it more like a flight from Los Angeles to New York, with a general and mostly accurate flight plan but with a human pilot capable of course correction during flight? Read More Read More
But Won’t You Bilk Me If I Pay By The Hour?
After a long search, you’ve finally found the perfect web designer. Her examples are beautiful, she has fantastic references, and her process looks great. But she bills by the hour, and that has you nervous. What if she takes way longer to design your site than she estimates? What happens if she gives you initial comps and you hate all of them – why should you have to pay her more money when she didn’t make you happy in the first... Read More
