How to get the money that you did not have time to earn?
There was a strange problem. So strange that it’s embarrassing to talk about her. Well, nothing among his - you can.
The thing is, we learned how to save money.
It would seem that this is good.
Unfortunately, this is not our money, but customer money.
So, let's try from the beginning and clearly tell the whole story.
A significant part of our projects goes through the production cycle based on the design process . In other words, on the flexible methodology of iterative approximations to the result.
')
This means that the financing of works is arranged according to the time & materials scheme.
It would seem that the poet’s dream: how much you work, you will get as much from a client. No exit from the budget, no horror fixed price .
But there is a nuance.
The fact is that in the course of the transaction, the so-called indicative project budget is still negotiated. The amount in which we are very, very high probability fit. Sometimes it eventually turns out to be more, but more often - less.
And then an ambush happens. Look here.
Suppose we agreed with the client that the project will cost approximately 300 thousand (or a little more). Getting started. Weekly check-agree on the next week download. We reach the final in this way and successfully close the project. We count money.
And suddenly it turns out that the 300,000 project shrank to 190, or even 160 thousand. Well, it turned out that we did everything faster than expected. And the client turned out to be sanity, than it was possible to assume at the start. And along the way, some tasks were thrown away, some corners were cut off.
At the finish, a happy client who received the promise with the right level of quality, at the agreed time and, most importantly, for much less money.
And we are unhappy.
Why unhappy? Yes, because we have spent time-effort to conclude a transaction for 300 thousand. And we received from this money already promised to us - well, if two thirds.
That is a significant part of the work on the conclusion of the contract (and this, by the way, and marketing, and sales, and planning, and legal red tape) was done in vain. The cost of this escort went down the drain.
The most terrible thing happens if the project does not fall too much into the range of budgets that we are interested in, and as a result of all this production savings it also flies beyond the lower limit of the reasonable one. Then the cost of the transaction eats up all the profits and even lead the project to the minus. Well, fun.
All this happens because of our stupid habit of saving client money. Agree, a strange manner: the money has already been promised, but we do not want to take it.
More precisely, we can not. Do not do the same time posts in the reports on the project. That is, someone might have thought it a reasonable step, but we are simply not capable of such business feats.
We must look for another way.
We haven't found anything yet.
But there are several hypotheses, which we are going to check now.
The first. Suppose the client is ready at the end of the project to “do something else to surrender.” And it will be quite happy to receive from us any extras. services that fit into an already agreed budget. Why not offer him these services? Money is already promised anyway. We must try, try.
The second. Suppose a redistribution of time within the project would lead to even more-better customer happiness. Saved on approvals - they added time to the designer, found the idea without any brainstorming - bought the time of the invited expert, and so on. That is, one must “simply” realize the amount of time saved not once at the very end of the project, but constantly in the process.
Why is this “just” never really easy? The thing is that, even though you read books about the theory of system limitations , in practice you still run into a disagreeable feature of IT managers: they don’t like to admit deviation from the plan.
Usually, this ambush hits the business owners who want to find out about the problems with the deadlines - and will not know about them until the end is unbeatable.
But we have the opposite happened. Managers save time - and do not consider this something significant. Well, I saved it - and it's good. In addition, for each individual task, the savings may be small - this is generally a good addition to the pension for the project.
So now we will try in the scheme of weekly monitoring of progress on projects (which was - what will be - than the heart will calm down) to include the reduction of the balance on the "time bank" for each project. Let this “bank” not be spread over tasks, but concentrated in one place. Yes, it looks like TOC technology, nothing new, but we still doubt the success of the event - we have not implemented it yet.
And what would you do in such an unexpected situation?
The thing is, we learned how to save money.
It would seem that this is good.
Unfortunately, this is not our money, but customer money.
So, let's try from the beginning and clearly tell the whole story.
A significant part of our projects goes through the production cycle based on the design process . In other words, on the flexible methodology of iterative approximations to the result.
')
This means that the financing of works is arranged according to the time & materials scheme.
It would seem that the poet’s dream: how much you work, you will get as much from a client. No exit from the budget, no horror fixed price .
But there is a nuance.
The fact is that in the course of the transaction, the so-called indicative project budget is still negotiated. The amount in which we are very, very high probability fit. Sometimes it eventually turns out to be more, but more often - less.
And then an ambush happens. Look here.
Suppose we agreed with the client that the project will cost approximately 300 thousand (or a little more). Getting started. Weekly check-agree on the next week download. We reach the final in this way and successfully close the project. We count money.
And suddenly it turns out that the 300,000 project shrank to 190, or even 160 thousand. Well, it turned out that we did everything faster than expected. And the client turned out to be sanity, than it was possible to assume at the start. And along the way, some tasks were thrown away, some corners were cut off.
At the finish, a happy client who received the promise with the right level of quality, at the agreed time and, most importantly, for much less money.
And we are unhappy.
Why unhappy? Yes, because we have spent time-effort to conclude a transaction for 300 thousand. And we received from this money already promised to us - well, if two thirds.
That is a significant part of the work on the conclusion of the contract (and this, by the way, and marketing, and sales, and planning, and legal red tape) was done in vain. The cost of this escort went down the drain.
The most terrible thing happens if the project does not fall too much into the range of budgets that we are interested in, and as a result of all this production savings it also flies beyond the lower limit of the reasonable one. Then the cost of the transaction eats up all the profits and even lead the project to the minus. Well, fun.
All this happens because of our stupid habit of saving client money. Agree, a strange manner: the money has already been promised, but we do not want to take it.
More precisely, we can not. Do not do the same time posts in the reports on the project. That is, someone might have thought it a reasonable step, but we are simply not capable of such business feats.
We must look for another way.
We haven't found anything yet.
But there are several hypotheses, which we are going to check now.
The first. Suppose the client is ready at the end of the project to “do something else to surrender.” And it will be quite happy to receive from us any extras. services that fit into an already agreed budget. Why not offer him these services? Money is already promised anyway. We must try, try.
The second. Suppose a redistribution of time within the project would lead to even more-better customer happiness. Saved on approvals - they added time to the designer, found the idea without any brainstorming - bought the time of the invited expert, and so on. That is, one must “simply” realize the amount of time saved not once at the very end of the project, but constantly in the process.
Why is this “just” never really easy? The thing is that, even though you read books about the theory of system limitations , in practice you still run into a disagreeable feature of IT managers: they don’t like to admit deviation from the plan.
Usually, this ambush hits the business owners who want to find out about the problems with the deadlines - and will not know about them until the end is unbeatable.
But we have the opposite happened. Managers save time - and do not consider this something significant. Well, I saved it - and it's good. In addition, for each individual task, the savings may be small - this is generally a good addition to the pension for the project.
So now we will try in the scheme of weekly monitoring of progress on projects (which was - what will be - than the heart will calm down) to include the reduction of the balance on the "time bank" for each project. Let this “bank” not be spread over tasks, but concentrated in one place. Yes, it looks like TOC technology, nothing new, but we still doubt the success of the event - we have not implemented it yet.
And what would you do in such an unexpected situation?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/284028/
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