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Monday, November 27, 2017

Absolutely no Fixed Bid Contracts - Ever!

I got a job from a client and it was a fixed bid.  We pay you x dollars and you finish the work.
BUT...

  • The scope was ill-defined
    • the "spec" for the project was "replace our existing system", not an objective set of criteria.  Therefore any variation between their old system and the new one could be considered incorrect.
    • If there are features that we cant see from the 300 screen shots we have, then we'll have to do them all to be "finished"
    • because there is no objective spec, this will end up where all fixed bid contracts end up
      • the client will expect us to "finish" the project forever, because if they ever accept the work, then they will have to pay more for changes.
      • the client will always have a giant list of 'fixes' whenever we show them the completed work.
      • we will continue to push them to go live, and they will have every inclination to manufacture more and more changes, even if they are not in the original project.
  • The estimate was based on a very simplified version of the work
    • we showed the client a mockup with all the bells and whistles, and gave them an estimate.
    • the client liked it, but wanted the work much, much cheaper.
    • we offered a simplified approach to lower the cost.
    • they didn't really listen and kept expecting everything at the lower cost.

This week I will finish the project.  I will build it to the demo server and the client will look at it.  We have exhausted ALL the hours assigned to the work.  They are going to have a list of things they want "fixed" before going live.  At that point we will want more money, but as far as they are concerned, it's a fixed bid.  They get whatever they want for the agreed price. 

Welcome to slavery.  Working free forever and never getting paid again.

Unless a project is less than 10 hours, NEVER accept a fixed bid contract.  It's a no-win scenario.

...

Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey.  He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

MVC ActionLink will not Accept Markup (easy fix!)


I needed to make a button that included a glyphicon.  The glyphicon looked like this:  
<i class="fa fa-plus"></i>  
If you use this in @Html.ActionLink() you'll see the markup in your page, not the glyphicon.

There is a way around this:

Replace your @Html.ActionLink() with this...

<a href="@Url.Action("Index","Customers",new { CompanyID = Model.UniqueId }, null)" class="btn btn-warning"><i class="fa fa-plus"></i></a>

Yeah, it's a lot more text, but Url.Action() does most of the heavy lifting.  Another requirement I had was that the QA website URL includes a folder. i.e. in development the URL is http://localhost:34238/ and in QA it's http://website.com/projectname/.  This prevents me from just hard coding the link to /Customers/Index...  Url.Action takes care of this as well.



Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey.  He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.

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