Tag: contract
Friday, 18 November 2011
The (un)ethics of Big Vendor contracts with cost-driven companies
Posted by Simon Baker
Consider a company looking to procure external software services. This is a company that manages by objectives and spends time and effort micromanaging costs. In a typical procurement situation, probably a tender for services, their fixation on cost pushes them to select one of the cheaper quotes. This quote happens to be from Big Vendor who Procuring Company lock into a contract to deliver precisely the specification.
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Thursday, 17 February 2011
We're better off finding out than farting around up front
Posted by Simon Baker
Fixing scope up front says win-lose to me. It's not the basis for a happy relationship. Everyone is best of friends while things appear to be tickety-boo, but that's just an illusion. The moment tickety-boo goes bang the contract kicks in to identify who can be blamed and penalized. But I digress.
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Monday, 12 December 2005
The illusion of fixed price contracts
Posted by Simon Baker
Companies need to move away from using fixed price contracts where their expectation is, for a fixed price, they can have everything they ask for delivered on a specified day in the future. How did it get this way?
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Sunday, 30 October 2005
Take a run up
Posted by Simon Baker
The Extreme Programming corollary practice of negotiated scope contract advocates fixing time, cost and quality while scope is negotiated on an ongoing basis. I am currently working on a contract that employs this practice. There is a contract per iteration that fixes time. The composition of the team is fixed per iteration therefore fixing cost. The quality is fixed by adhering to coding standards and ensuring a JUnit test coverage greater than 85% is maintained with the outstanding 15% corresponding to functionality that is unlikely to break.
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