RE: Questions - Going from Hourly to Per Project Basis

[MList -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Sharon Burton-Hardin [mailto:sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com]
> Sent: October 1, 2003 12:53 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Questions - Going from Hourly to Per Project Basis
> 
> 
> 
> Project managers have budgets. They get money to do a project. Billing
> hourly with no apparent cap is insane in this environment. 

As a salaried employee, I'm "billing" hourly by filling out my 
timesheets. I'm scheduled for this'n'that project, and I charge 
my time against their codes on my timesheets. If the project 
slips, I don't go home... well, if it's obvious that I can take 
a day or two of vacation I might, but otherwise, I just keep 
working on SOMETHING, even if it's investigating new tools and 
work methods, and I charge it to the projects to which I've 
been assigned. Certainly, I juggle a bit when projects start to 
overlap more than intended, but I try to make sure that I 
"penalize" the one that slipped, and not the one(s) that are 
on course and on time.

My only leverage is that the project managers know I've got 
other commitments, and that it becomes THEIR job to negotiate 
with other project owners if their project slips into somebody 
else's allotment of my time.  "You either deliver what I need 
when I need it, or you get to arm-wrestle with Lauren about 
bumping her schedule ... or about having me too tired to do 
a good job on her stuff because I've been working extra hours 
to save your bacon. And no, you don't get to 'hire a contractor', 
because it would take almost as much of my time to get a 
contractor up to speed as it would for me to do it myself in 
the timeframe that remains."

> If the client stops working on our part of the project and 
> delays things
> beyond our control, we roll to the clause of the contract that says
> something like "Delays will add to the cost of the project." 
> And then I
> invoke that clause, after telling them this is going to 
> happen, and they get
> billed some weekly amount over the original total cost of the 
> project until
> they start doing what they agreed contractually to do. That 
> usually moves
> things right along. It costs the client money with no result 
> for spending
> that money. And we do have a contract that details what they 
> do and what we
> do. Not doing what they agreed to is technically violating 
> the contract.

Ok, so ignore my previous (I missed this para when I was writing 
to your previous post), except to give a little detail on the 
fine points and phrasings that work. That would be what the 
original writer needs to know, in order not to get shafted on 
the first date... so to speak.

What you say makes sense, but for a person who hasn't done it 
before, it looks a lot like attempting to cross a chasm in 
two leaps.  The devil is in the details, the little things 
that trip up the inexperienced -- "if only I'd had a comma 
right there in that clause of the contract, I wouldn't be 
working all this unpaid overtime right now".  Yes, I know 
that certain specifics will change with jurisdiction, but 
nitty-gritty tips and tricks are probably useful to most 
people.

/kevin

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