Drupal Jobs - Best Practises on Drupaljob.com
Module DeveloperEveryone wants the "best deal they can find" including the Drupal-Help-Seekers and Drupal-Experts on DRUPALJOB. Drupal-Help-Seekers want to pay as little as possible for the best quality work while Drupal-Experts want to earn a fair rate of return on their investment of skills and time. Somewhere in the middle of those two needs lies a win-win situation if you are willing to look for it. Keep in mind as you read the following project pricing tips that they’re only guidelines. Oftentimes Drupal-Help-Seekers are confused as to how to approach the task of setting a maximum price for their projects. Hopefully the following information can help.
Tip #1 - Don’t Set an Unrealistic Price
As a Drupal-Help-Seeker, you should strive to set a realistic price for the amount of work you are requesting. There are some Drupal-Help-Seekers who set unreasonably low prices for complex work and there are Drupal-Experts who will accept those prices. You should know however, that this type of "bottom fishing" is not without its risks.
There will be times when you will get the job done according to specification even after setting and accepting a quote that you know was ridiculously low. Other times, however, you may find yourself on the losing end of the deal and either have the Drupal-Expert walk away without completing the project, or receiving work which is well below your expectations. In either case you'll end up seeking another Drupal-Expert to completely redo the assignment. If you’re a gambler and you’ve got time to spend and money to waste on this type of game, then play away.
But at some level you need to think about the Drupal-Expert. After all, they’re probably relying on the money earned from your project to pay their bills. If you don’t accept the project after the Drupal-Expert put their time and effort into it, for whatever reason, that Drupal-Expert doesn’t get paid. The Drupal-Expert loses money and you will have lost valuable time. This is not a win-win situation.
Time is money. And time should never purposely be wasted - neither yours nor the person’s with whom you’ve contracted.
Tip #2 - Make You Needs Clear
As a Drupal-Help-Seeker, you also need to create a request for proposal (RFP) that clearly describes what it is you need. Clear specifications almost always result in more accurate quotes and help reduce disappointment which results from misunderstandings down the road.
Drupal-Experts on DRUPALJOB have many skills. But one skill no Drupal-Expert possesses is the ability to read your mind. So don’t make them! If you need programming done, and you forget to mention a major or even minor step that has to occur in the process, the resulting program won’t have it. It won’t be the Drupal-Expert’s fault; it will be yours. You can make the claim that you did not get what you expected, but you cannot withhold payment because you failed to accurately specify your expectations.
Posting as a Drupal-Help-Seeker on DRUPALJOB is no different than any other software development environment. Good, solid specifications are crucial to the overall success of the project. You’ll get back only what you ask for and nothing more.
Tip #3 - Determine the Type of Project
After you have clearly identified your project specifications, it’ time to begin work on setting the maximum budget. Try to determine whether the work you have is the type that’s better priced on an hourly basis or a per-project basis.
There aren’t really any guidelines for making this type of determination, either at DRUPALJOB or anywhere else, so there is no right or wrong determination. The goal here is to help you think more about how long the project will take to complete. If it’ll take X number of hours and the average hourly rate of the people who possess the type of skills you need is Y dollars, simply multiply out the numbers and you’ve got your maximum budget.
The same reasoning applies if you’re basing your decision on a per-project basis. You probably have some idea as to what price a project such as yours would fetch “out in the real world” so use this figure as a basis for calculating your maximum budget.
Just don’t approach the pricing with the belief that “someone who knows what they’re doing can do this in an hour” because unless you know first hand what it takes to do the project, you don’t know whether or not this statement is true. The reality is, many projects aren’t as easy to complete as they appear on the surface.
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Effective project management
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