[YBA] Freescale i.MX27 project

[Danny Lieberman]

Shachar

Shakoof.
Well put.    I personally would tell the customer hasta la vista

danny
-- 
Danny Lieberman
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.software.co.il/wordpress - Danny on data security
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/onlyjazz

2009/8/13 Shachar Shemesh <shachar at shemesh.biz>

>  sammy ominsky wrote:
>
> On 13/08/2009, at 09:04, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote:
>
> The customer is looking for someone who can a commit to doing the board
> bring-up process, write the BSP and set up a BusyBox distribution with Qt
> libraries within five weeks, with significant penalties for late delivery.
>
>
> Are there significant bonuses for early delivery?
>
> Without knowing the details, or anything else about the project or the
> client, here is what my experience says will happen to anyone brave enough
> to submit a quote. This typifies my belief that some clients put up "money
> saving" requirements that end up shooting themselves in the foot.
>
> The client is, likely, working under the following constraints:
>
>    - They just received the devices from manufacturing, and need to have
>    the board brought up as soon as possible
>    - They are living under an external deadline. They cannot extend the
>    five weeks deadline because it is a deadline to them. This is either a
>    similar contract with their customer, or an investor who is impatient to see
>    whether he wants to pull his money, or any such similar circumstances.
>    - Engineer looks at the task to be done, says "well, 90% of it is just
>    duplicating what has already been done for the Freescale development board,
>    so it shouldn't be a problem".
>     - Client then says "hey! let's outsource the risk instead of just the
>    work".
>
> Any reasonable contractor will perform the following calculation:
>
>    - There are a huge number of unknowns about this work. You can never
>    tell how much is "based closely", or what horrendous bugs you will find in
>    the drivers once you start. I was once involved in a project (along with
>    TkOS) where the board was "based closely" on the versatile platform. The
>    project was a 9 months project that included a lot more than merely bringing
>    up the board, but seven months into the project "board bringup" tasks were
>    still being performed.
>    - As a contractor, if I'm going to accept the client's risks, I need to
>    be rewarded. In statistical terms, the expected value must be positive. If
>    the project is at a loss if I am late, it must be really really profitable
>    if I'm on time, or else there is no point in taking it up to begin with.
>
> As a result, the quote is typically high. Very high. In addition, the
> contractor obviously states that all times are from the point where an order
> is issued.
>
> The client is surprised. They usually don't understand that it was their
> penalty requirements that drove the price up. After all, this is supposed to
> be a simple project, merely performing adaptations to an already brought up
> platform, over in five weeks. As a result, it takes a few days, maybe even a
> week, to approve the quote (usually demanding that the price become lower).
> As far as the contractor is concerned, this week is not counted toward the
> delivery date, but since the client is constrained by external deadlines, as
> far as they are concerned, it does. The result is that the project is late,
> the client AND the contractor start disgruntled at the other side's
> "unreasonable behavior", and all sides lose.
>
> Here is what could have been done to make things better. The client issues
> a request for a project at cost+, asking for a discount on the hourly rate
> in exchange for a significant bonus in case the project is delivered on
> time. Mathematically speaking, this offer is identical to the above offer,
> but as it is phrased in positive rather than negative terms, it is much
> easier to approve. This, of course, means that it can start much earlier,
> and have a better chance of succeeding.
>
> Shachar
>
> --
> Shachar Shemesh
> Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.http://www.lingnu.com
>
>
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