As a software developer, you are always given projects without knowing the contractual details involved. However, there was one project that I was originally assigned to do, and was forwarded some documents about the project. In the document, there were some fairly formal documents which included some pricing.
The project was actually straightforward because we already had the functionality for users in England and they wanted users in Wales to use similar functionality. It was the same for the most part, but there was some minor customisation required. So it mainly involved deleting or tweaking a few files to remove the validation based on the country. Then there would be some testing involved to make sure the feature really did work when configured for Wales.
Some Senior Developers and Architects had estimated the project at 6 months which was a bit extreme, and reckoned the cost of development was £442,404, then some miscellaneous costs for “platform, network and migration” which would take the total to £445,620!
On the face of it, that sounds expensive. But when I think of the labour cost involved, where I work, a Junior might earn £25k a year, then Seniors are more like £32k-£45k. So if you have a few developers and testers on a project, with some managers involved, and it really does take 6 months, then the costs soon add up. Then you want to make a decent profit on it too.
I guess the cheeky thing is, the customer might not know what you already have; so you could charge as if it was new but you are just recycling/reusing existing code.
The end result is the same for the new customer isn’t it?
What I didn’t understand in the document is that there was a line that said:
“The requirements described within this CCN must be delivered by January 2024 in order to support a proof of concept with a limited number of users in a live environment. Once the proof of concept is complete, an implementation plan will be defined by the programme team to determine the pace of the national rollout, to be complete by January 2026.”
My question is, does it make sense to create a proof of concept (POC) that works well enough, but then have 2 years to actually complete the work?
Well people don’t have any experience of what they are suggesting so are just making it up. I agree though, if you have a proof of concept you’re kind of almost there. Depends on how hacky the POC is I suppose
Robert (Senior Developer)
Even more confusing is that we didn’t deliver the POC by January, but we did deliver the completed feature by the end of March.
Stranger Coding Tings 