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Executive Summary
You can transform the way you manage a project by switching from waterfall contracts to ones that are shorter and more expensive. You no longer have to manage hours and timelines. Instead, you can concentrate on communication and completing the most important work for the client. Client satisfaction is higher when you deliver the highest priority work to the client. There is less disagreement about what needs to be delivered contractually. Simply put, Duration and Price contracts place client collaboration before contract negotiation. This leads to great results.
Type of Client Company: Financial
Type of project: Application
Cost range: $500,000 to $900,000.
Timeline: 1 Year
Methodologies: Agile/Scrum
Size of the team: 5-7 (varying durations, allocations).
Team makeup: 2 FTE Developers
.5 FTE Test Engineer
Designer -.25 FTE
Product Strategist -.25 FTE
Product Manager -.25 FTE
Principal Goal
It is difficult to create a custom software solution for financial companies that meets their unique business needs. Main Challenge
Resolve complex business logic that has been left behind by many software solutions. We started with a prototyping and validation engagement
We’ve all seen it. A potential client walks through your doors to inquire about a first engagement. Although they don’t know what they need, they are certain they need it. Our client understood that they needed to either redesign their existing system to meet their growing business needs or create a new system. We recommended a Prototyping and Validation engagement to get projects off to a good start with clients. Our agency uses Prototyping & Validation engagements for project discovery. This allows us to determine what we should build and if the market will respond to it. Here’s what we include in a prototyping and validation engagement
We often include a Product Strategist and Product Manager as well as a Designer.
We create high-fidelity clickable prototypes. We skip wireframing and move straight to this stage as it speeds up the process.
We conduct user testing (finding groups to validate or invalidate prototypes so we can build the right solution).
We conduct a market validation process (in this case, we didn’t need it but we do it to make sure there’s a market willing to purchase a finished product).
We also performed a technical audit for this client to determine if they could use their existing system instead of building a new one.
During this engagement, it became apparent that they needed a whole suite of products to solve their problem. This was due to a legacy system that was built on an outdated framework and codebase that was not extensible beyond its original intent. Next, we introduced the Duration & price contract
It can be difficult to switch from waterfall-style contracts. It is one thing to decide whether to use agile or waterfall methodology for your project, but it is quite another to package this up in a way that makes the most sense to clients. SIDENOTE
Alexa Huston, a member of our team, wrote an article about Duration & Price contracts. She also discusses their drawbacks and tips for implementation. It can be difficult to introduce Duration & Price contracts to clients. This is because it’s our job as consultants to convince clients who have never worked in an agile environment that this is the best way to go. These conversations are what help us the most.