Posted by JGonzalez on October 19, 2010 at 5:20pm
Curious to see what kind of work other micro shops do. Currently I'm project lead. We have a 5 person team, with mainly 3 working on the drupal projects (1 designer, and 2 developers). We work on about 2-5 drupal projects a month (we do all sorts of other projects, non-drupal relate), although we are trying to work on less projects a month that bring in more money (balancing many clients at once is not fun). Our projects average between $2500-$8000 for small business websites.
What does your team look like and what do you guys build?
Comments
I'm the only full-timer here,
I'm the only full-timer here, but I work with a part-time graphic artist and a part-time admin/data-entry/configuration person. Over the years, we've done everything from tiny (sub-$1k) training gigs to medium (between $10 and $20k) development projects, mostly for small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the occasional small government (city or county) entity.
The biggest mistake I ever made: taking on a 15-month project under a heavy NDA (I couldn't even tell others that I'd worked on the site, or that it runs Drupal). The pay and steady work were very attractive when the project started, but after a year and a half (due to scope creep on their part) of work, I had a portfolio full of two-year-old projects and no recent work I could show prospective clients. When one takes into account the business I've lost due to my anemic portfolio, the project paid very very poorly.
Projects, especially long ones, with unreasonable NDAs, are something I will never take again. Frankly, I've come to see the wisdom in Eric Raymond's stance on the matter.
--Susan
NDAs and Contracts
Susan clearly took on a losing agreement. I would not be responding here except the link at the end of Susan's post hit a nerve (and I don't know Eric so its not about him but the disturbing position he has).
There are two sides to every story. As a person who hires programmers, designers, and systems administrators I am thankful for establishing a written agreement which includes NDA with every contractor I pay money to and trust with access to my business.
By nature, I believe most men and woman are good natured and quick to forget promises. I learned some things over the years:
Small buyers of web services almost always receive "sorry we are too busy" from the bigger shops and I fully understand why. This forces us to interview scores of small shops and freelancers who are willing to work with the higher risk of a small client not paying or poorly specifying their needs.
Many small shops and freelancers out there call themselves programmers, designers, and system administrators. They talk the talk, they know the buzzwords, they promise to meet your budget and schedule, show you some links to their past work, and get hired.
Conclusion: Small buyers frequently get the shaft from well intended web service providers.
My first year in this business was spent chasing these promise makers who mostly provided half finished work and dragged on projects long past the deadlines and budgets we verbally agreed to. The time wasted and money lost was painful as it forced us to hire more people to clean up their mess.
So I wrote an Independent Contractors Agreement in plain English, at first there were some complaints and I always modified the agreement to be mutually satisfying as I have no intent to punish or chase anyone or to be chased after by someone who wants to punish me.
Today, 95% of the folks read it and sign it with little or no question. The 5% that complain and refuse are not showing me they stand for some higher moral character than most. What they do show me (my perception - right or wrong) is they don't want to play by any rules except their own. I am no longer willing to turn over the keys to my livelihood for a virtual smile and an email promise.
We have all suffered or know of others who have suffered where one party blames the other for failure of the project. There has to be some mutual ground rules and a fair written agreement ALWAYS minimizes bad outcomes. In fact, we have had zero problems with the scores of contractors who have signed our agreement. We have never had to even mention the document a second time.
My advice is to always have a written agreement that goes well beyond the NDA. This protects the interests of both parties and keeps either from ignoring their duties and responsibilities. In other words, written agreements remind us of our promises.