There was once a repairman called in to fix a big, expensive machine. He examined it for a few minutes, whacked it with a hammer, and the machine started right up. He presented his bill for $400. “But all you did was hit it with a hammer!” complained the customer. The repairman said “Oh, I only billed you $5 for that. The other $395 was for my knowing where to hit it.”
I am still with Quick Hit, but I’m back on the terms where I was over the summer – part time, and non-exclusive. Ain’t nobody going away mad, now. Dunno if you all have noticed, but the economy is in free fall, and venture capitalists are telling their projects to spend every dollar like it’s their last. A community manager retains customers. A community manager acquires customers. Community managers can help you prioritize your to-do list, even. What a CM can’t do is build features out of raw code. For that, you need a programmer, and headcount budgets are what they are.
I don’t have to like it in order to understand it. I love the Quick Hit team, and I really love the Quick Hit community. I’m honored to still be associated with the project, but I am, once again, consulting, writing, and raising hell.
…errmmm … welcome back?
Nerf Hammers. That’s all I got.
I’ve always liked that story.
Welcome back.
Sorry to hear, but welcome back!
Well, the old tropes aply – their loss being our gain, and all that. Your posts are always informative and entertaining and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts again. Good luck keeping the coffers filled, of course.
Customers have a hard time understanding coder-hours. On a software project I mistakenly commented that I felt that I could code a solution to a particular problem in one solid day at the keyboard. When the estimate was complete and passed to the customer they balked at a 24 hour number. “You said you could code it in a WORK day, not a 24 hour day!” We sat down and went over the numbers in detail, which we don’t actually include in the estimate:
Meeting of three people for two hours to come up with the detailed design = 6 hours
Customer meeting to review design, identify and make minor spec changes, get approval = 2 hours
QA staff member review of spec and creation of test plan = 2 hours
One solid heads down day of coding = 8 hours
Code review with QA = 1 hour (two people / 30 minute meeting)
QA staff member executes test plan = 1 hour
Bug fix time estimate (8 hour coding time x .25) = 2 hours
Demo to customer of completed subsystem = 1 hour
Project wrap up / integration / documentation of lessons learned = 1 hour
Their response “I don’t want to pay for all of that… I just want to pay for the coding!”