sarettah
09-29-2005, 09:45 PM
Where to start?
Back at the beginning of the month, I got hit up by someone. They told me that they were in desperate straits more or less. Their programmer had bugged out on them and they needed someone to finish a project. They said the programming was about 85% done and that they just needed a couple or three things finished.
So, I went and took a look at the site, then got the ftp info and went in and looked at the code that was there, what database stuff was there, put 5 or 6 hours into getting familiar with what was there and what wasn't.
My determination was that it was far from 85% complete and that there was a lot of work left to do.
So, I got with the client and we talked a bit. I found out that the programmer who quit wanted half the money he had been offered originally and I found out that the budget was pretty small.
But, I need a project or two that I can get out in front of people to be able to say "See, this is what I can do" because most of my big projects are quite proprietary. So eventhough I can make a program slam through 2 or 3 million records in real time across the net, I don't have anything to show to prove it without breaking either actual or unspoken NDAs.
What I did was I told him I would finish it for him, do the things that he said he needed doing for the other half of the original budget with the conditions being that 1. he pay off the original programmer so I don't have to worry about someone trying to sabotage things and 2. that I can use it promotionally and that if I do a good job he shout my praises to the world.
That was September 2. Between then and September 27 (2 days ago) I put between 130 and 140 hours into a database design, a system design and the code (not necessarilly in that order). I had the primary thing that he wanted in place by September 5th or 6th. I then attacked making everything else work because most of the code that was in there was hardcoded (there were a couple of dynamic pieces and fairly well done I might add and I did manage to get a good flow design from what was in place).
Last weekend I told him that we were probably only a week or so out from when we could go live and I proceeded to finish up various admin screens that I wanted in place for management of the site and content.
He seemed very pleased throughout this entire process.
On Sept 27 he hit me up. He had decided that he wanted to change the hierarchy of how the content was pulled and displayed.
Now, the data and directory structure I had inherited were still pretty much the structure I was using. Although I had made an extremely flexible framework to handle the site, the structures involved in storing and pulling of the content were integrated into a lot of the code, not hardcoded per se, but assumed.
Well, my actual inital reaction and answer was an email that merely said "Holy Shit Maynard !"
I then pondered for a while and sent him an email I will call "reality check". In this I informed him of how much actual time I had already spent and how much that would have cost if I was billing him at my normal rate and how mush that would cost if I was billing him for what my employer bills me out for. I did this because although I had been giving him regular progress reports, I had not told him how much time had been involved. So, if he thought I was only putting an hour or two a day in, that was my fault because I had not let him know. I also informed him that I had had to pretty much rewrite all the code that was there to make it all work properly.
I then went and had dinner, when I came back to the puter I started looking through the code to see what all would have to be changed. I wrote him a note that it looked doable if he really wanted to do it and then 2 minutes later wrote a note saying no it isn't, back and forth, back and forth, what to do, what to do, what to do he wacky do do do....
The next morning I delivered a missive. I still wanted to see the project through because like I said, I wanted something to be able to show off. The conditions I laid out in a nut shell were:
1. I am in charge of the project.
2. I get to make a thread on Oprano detailing the project (without revealing the domain, site or client until launch time)
3. Some link trading to be determined later
So, this is the start of my "case study" thread on the project.
Where we are at now:
I worked yesterday on redoing a bunch of the front end work to reflect a "look" of the hierarchy he wanted. This morning he told me he liked it so I spent a few hours today laying out a new database structure, incorporationg everything I had but expanding the definition a bit. I also switched out a bunch of content data so that it could be pulled the way I wanted it to be.
I told him to slam the code out and get it tested, going from where we were to the new structure was a matter of 10-20 hours actual time. It looks like I might not be too far off. I have put in 6 or 7 hours into the switch already and if I manage to get some time in tonight I should be able to be back to where we were on the 27th by tomorrow evening.
Going forth we will be tweaking the design some, tweaking the sql code and the databases and testing the fuck out of it all. I told him we would be shooting for a live date of November 1 with a beta date of October 15.
I cannot reveal the type of site it is or the features that it will have because I know better..lol. It is not a ground breaking new idea but even so, I do not feel that it would be wise or ethical to reveal it prior to the beta launch at least. I can say that I have done estimates or been consulted about the type of site by several different people in the past 3 or 4 months and now I get a chance to see if my estimates are anywhere near the ballpark :)
Back at the beginning of the month, I got hit up by someone. They told me that they were in desperate straits more or less. Their programmer had bugged out on them and they needed someone to finish a project. They said the programming was about 85% done and that they just needed a couple or three things finished.
So, I went and took a look at the site, then got the ftp info and went in and looked at the code that was there, what database stuff was there, put 5 or 6 hours into getting familiar with what was there and what wasn't.
My determination was that it was far from 85% complete and that there was a lot of work left to do.
So, I got with the client and we talked a bit. I found out that the programmer who quit wanted half the money he had been offered originally and I found out that the budget was pretty small.
But, I need a project or two that I can get out in front of people to be able to say "See, this is what I can do" because most of my big projects are quite proprietary. So eventhough I can make a program slam through 2 or 3 million records in real time across the net, I don't have anything to show to prove it without breaking either actual or unspoken NDAs.
What I did was I told him I would finish it for him, do the things that he said he needed doing for the other half of the original budget with the conditions being that 1. he pay off the original programmer so I don't have to worry about someone trying to sabotage things and 2. that I can use it promotionally and that if I do a good job he shout my praises to the world.
That was September 2. Between then and September 27 (2 days ago) I put between 130 and 140 hours into a database design, a system design and the code (not necessarilly in that order). I had the primary thing that he wanted in place by September 5th or 6th. I then attacked making everything else work because most of the code that was in there was hardcoded (there were a couple of dynamic pieces and fairly well done I might add and I did manage to get a good flow design from what was in place).
Last weekend I told him that we were probably only a week or so out from when we could go live and I proceeded to finish up various admin screens that I wanted in place for management of the site and content.
He seemed very pleased throughout this entire process.
On Sept 27 he hit me up. He had decided that he wanted to change the hierarchy of how the content was pulled and displayed.
Now, the data and directory structure I had inherited were still pretty much the structure I was using. Although I had made an extremely flexible framework to handle the site, the structures involved in storing and pulling of the content were integrated into a lot of the code, not hardcoded per se, but assumed.
Well, my actual inital reaction and answer was an email that merely said "Holy Shit Maynard !"
I then pondered for a while and sent him an email I will call "reality check". In this I informed him of how much actual time I had already spent and how much that would have cost if I was billing him at my normal rate and how mush that would cost if I was billing him for what my employer bills me out for. I did this because although I had been giving him regular progress reports, I had not told him how much time had been involved. So, if he thought I was only putting an hour or two a day in, that was my fault because I had not let him know. I also informed him that I had had to pretty much rewrite all the code that was there to make it all work properly.
I then went and had dinner, when I came back to the puter I started looking through the code to see what all would have to be changed. I wrote him a note that it looked doable if he really wanted to do it and then 2 minutes later wrote a note saying no it isn't, back and forth, back and forth, what to do, what to do, what to do he wacky do do do....
The next morning I delivered a missive. I still wanted to see the project through because like I said, I wanted something to be able to show off. The conditions I laid out in a nut shell were:
1. I am in charge of the project.
2. I get to make a thread on Oprano detailing the project (without revealing the domain, site or client until launch time)
3. Some link trading to be determined later
So, this is the start of my "case study" thread on the project.
Where we are at now:
I worked yesterday on redoing a bunch of the front end work to reflect a "look" of the hierarchy he wanted. This morning he told me he liked it so I spent a few hours today laying out a new database structure, incorporationg everything I had but expanding the definition a bit. I also switched out a bunch of content data so that it could be pulled the way I wanted it to be.
I told him to slam the code out and get it tested, going from where we were to the new structure was a matter of 10-20 hours actual time. It looks like I might not be too far off. I have put in 6 or 7 hours into the switch already and if I manage to get some time in tonight I should be able to be back to where we were on the 27th by tomorrow evening.
Going forth we will be tweaking the design some, tweaking the sql code and the databases and testing the fuck out of it all. I told him we would be shooting for a live date of November 1 with a beta date of October 15.
I cannot reveal the type of site it is or the features that it will have because I know better..lol. It is not a ground breaking new idea but even so, I do not feel that it would be wise or ethical to reveal it prior to the beta launch at least. I can say that I have done estimates or been consulted about the type of site by several different people in the past 3 or 4 months and now I get a chance to see if my estimates are anywhere near the ballpark :)