721–730 of 789 posts
I read through the post, is there something about how to make sure this doesn't happen? How to catch yourself falling down that slope? They suggested using Freelancers instead of agencies, and that seems like good advice in this context, but I am looking for frameworks that make sure this doesn't happen even in a different situation
From the article: “The real issue, [WebAgency CEO] said, was that I was their only hourly client. I would always be at the mercy of long-term retainer clients pre-empting my project.” — and — From the article: “They were so excited about the project and got carried away, but he was going to remove the hours they’d spent redesigning the blog.” ___ That’s bait-and-switch in my opinion and might very well be illegal. My…
Not OP. No affiliation etc.. "since they might file for legal damages" On what grounds would their case not be thrown out immediately? Regardless of how well known their lawyer is. Also, the agency might as well close up shop if they sue as they(incl. CEO & most staff) would never be hired again as agency or individuals given the whole nature of the internet. from https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/yes-you-can…
Strategic lawsuit against public participation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_pu...
My point is OP given the situation should speak to an attorney.
As for your points, they’re specific to the US, set of assumptions, etc — which you didn’t even clearly articulate in your comment and created what appears to be a throwaway account to respond to a single comment. Impressive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 30% of IT projects still fail, despite “agile” now being widespread. That's a very optimistic statistic, unless "fail" is defined to be something other than "the opposite of success". IOW, a fail is any project that goes over time, over budget or delivers under scope. If you're defining success as "well, we delivered eventually, and we delivered 80% of the requirements, and it only went over budget by 20%", then, s…
Ok, by that measure I guess over 90% of projects would fail. Which would probably be unfair in most cases, because unlike this project, where the scope as defined by the client was 100% clear from the start, most clients when starting out with a project can't really say exactly what they want, so the scope creep is not only driven by the agency, but also (sometimes mostly) by the client.
It's a very abstract term. To put in simpler terms you will always have some outcome mismatch and generally your goal should be to reduce it. But if you do not have outcome mismatch, then you should push the line so that you can look ahead and understand future areas for improvement. Or you can just stay content if "market" is not chasing you.
Yes, I have definitely remained out of touch since the very first version of CSS. Yes, I hail from the days when you could do it all in a text editor and Javascript was optional. Yes, I've never paid attention to SEO and all that marketing stuff. But $46k?! And he initially even estimated $15k?!
I'm either missing something major (very possible!), or the industry is scam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple gets a lot of flack for keeping design constant over the years, but this is the reason why they do it. People hate changes to their workflow.
Quite to the contrary, Apple makes gratuitous changes to the UI of their OSes on an annual basis.
The UI skin might change a bit from year to year, but the UX of Key components haven't changed much for 40 years.
Used to work at AppleCare special programs support in Ireland, and when we did change something like hide certain menues in the Server appbecasue we wanted to disincentive usage of parts that were going to be depricated, all hell brekas loose with the older sysadmins calling in furious over having to read change notes. Thing is Apple makes sure to communicate a lot of these changes in emails sent to users, in change notes, and in popups, and people just refuse to take notice.
Or when Final Cut Pro X changed it's library management. There were good reasons for these changes, but people at first hated them since it disturbed an otherwise uninterrupted workflow. But when these changes are made, it's usually for a very good reason based on user feedback.
This did however highlight a serious behavioural issue with the users. Some users rarely update, so they never get the incremental changes, and instead opt to jump 3-5 major release versions which breaks everything. This in turn makes the user wary of ANY updates as they now associate it with breaking everything and changing everything. Which is a problem that they would not have if they did follow best update practices.
I saw the exact same issue at HPE, Nikon, Salesforce, Microsoft, when I worked there.
I am _baffled_ at the cost of websites these days. The company I'm currently at asked for a redesign of their site, and the team was told that their $7k estimate for costs was "too optimistic". Yes, I have definitely remained out of touch since the very first version of CSS. Yes, I hail from the days when you could do it all in a text editor and Javascript was optional. Yes, I've never paid attention to SEO and all t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple gets a lot of flack for keeping design constant over the years, but this is the reason why they do it. People hate changes to their workflow.
> Apple gets a lot of flack for keeping design constant over the years, but this is the reason why they do it. I am not so sure, they are turning system preferences into an iPhone app on macOS.
The UI/UX design of the System Preferences hasn't really changed since Snow Leopard imho. Cant speak to much about before Snow Leopard as that predates my personal experience.
I'd love to get an example of what you mean?
I recently left a boutique agency of 5 years and I can definitely resonate with this one. Our agency aimed to catch big fish, and we did, but since they are hard to land we'd pick up small jobs in the meantime, just like the project that you're describing here. In my perspective, this isn't someone deliberately ripping you off. I imagine they intended to ship at the cost they quoted, but the team didn't adjust their…
>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then ne…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple gets a lot of flack for keeping design constant over the years, but this is the reason why they do it. People hate changes to their workflow.
You can eventually learn to use a bad UI, but you'll never learn a constantly changing one.
I really liked windows 7, and was grumpy about first using Mac OS, but what won me over was that I didn't have to fight the OS in finding what I was looking for in settings.
Also the reason why I like Linux and BSD. there is a standard to where you find the setting files.
I'm not implying that this entire project was a scam, but it's interesting how two different flavours of working styles can bring out so much difference in efficiency.