Micro Shops

As javilinsharp pointed out in his post, the groupware solutions that are out there seem to be missing our niche (small dev shops in general -- not just Drupal) entirely. So, I have to ask:

What features would you want, or definitely not want, in a groupware solution for your company?

Being a small shop(Just myself) I find that building a working relationship with companies who offer services that they contract out is generally a difficult situation. I've done this with 2 projects thus far and each time payment and final approval took way too long, and you usually end up doing more work than the original spec entailed.

As I sit here working on a top-to-bottom redesign of the Suzhead web site, I find myself thinking about how we small shops try to balance promoting our services and products with doing "real" (aka billable) work.

My company web site is outdated and badly in need of the in-progress redesign. It was put up about four years ago when I began consulting, and has received only a few minor updates since. Why? It's just plain expedient to put off playing with my own site when there is billable work to be had, and in the past four years there has pretty much always been some billable work available.

Recently, I've been in a state of looking for smaller projects to fill in the down-time between larger ones, and I've run into some pretty outlandish expectations. I could raise my prices a little (especially on service contracts) and just eat the down-time. However, somewhere in the back of my mind is the idea that sub-$3k web sites deserve the love of an experienced developer, too.

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?

If you work for a small (1-5 person) Drupal shop, the new Micro Shops group is for you. Here we'll talk about the ins and outs of Drupal development on small teams: the tools we use, how we set up our workflows, dealing with clients, and more. Please help us spread the word and create a valuable resource for small-shop Drupalistas.

Regards,

Susan Stewart