Your first enterprise client

boatBurner

boatBurner

shutup, crime!
Feb 24, 2012
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I was recently propositioned from a mentor of mine during my military days to bid and likely win the job of developing an enterprise software. All details aside, money is on the table and I could use some advice.

1. I am not individually capable of building this software.
2. I have the capital to make this happen, including in-house developers.
3. This would be my first project of its kind.

A buddy of mine gave me some great advice. He said, "stfu and stop being a pussy. Go get it."

How was bidding, winning, and taking on your first enterprise client project? What did you do to learn the domain of the business? What are some great points to be made about competition when you're up against Team India? What questions should I be asking myself?

And if you're not sure if you can meet the scope of a project because you've never done it before, how should you take that into consideration when working with clients?

Thanks.
 


Why would you bid for a project you can't competently complete?

boatBurner said:
A buddy of mine gave me some great advice. He said, "stfu and stop being a pussy. Go get it."
Click to expand...

In other words, "lie like a motherfucker, hope they buy it, and take them for all you can get!". Up to you.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Why would you bid for a project you can't competently complete?
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This was my initial thinking. And then it was put into perspective that while I, personally, may not be able create this from the bottom up, I still may be undervaluing myself.

But your question is also the source of a lot of insecurity for me. Knowing strengths and weaknesses.

Matt, at what point would you feel competent enough (between you and your own capital) to take on a project like this?
 
Seeing as subcontracting is your only out, sounds like a great time to get your consulting business off the ground. Have you handled this type and scale of project before? What's the budget of the project? 5/10/20/20+?

There is potential to save a lot in wages by hiring employees to be in-house, rather than contracting out. I can go into the pros/cons of in house hiring vs subtracting, but I'm sure you have a proper head on your shoulders to determine which is in your best interest.


Where do your skill sets lay? Project management? Business analysis/strategy? Define the roles your project will require and level of expertise, and work back your needs from there.

When scoping this out, please for the love of god assign budget for project management and QA (pre and post launch). You'll live to regret it otherwise.
 
Can't speak for you, but I'm the kind of person who rises to the challenge. Most of the work I accepted for years was beyond me when I started it. I still take work I don't yet know how to do, forces me outside my comfort zone, and I gain valuable skills and experience.
 
You don't need all the skills to finish the job but you do need to be good a managing projects and people. I actually think managing the project and ensure it's getting done correctly is a better option than trying to be develop everything, quality control and communicate with the client.

The main things you want to deliver especially to enterprise clients are

1. Communicate clearly, this is probably the most important step and it's hard to do if you're trying to do everything in the project. If you over communicate you can get away with more than if you accept the money and disappear for a month or two.
2. Deliver quality, it's your name on the contract so make sure what you deliver is good. You'll be quality control so do it.
3. Set realistic timelines, this part is hard because people always say yeah that will take 4 weeks, 100 hours or something like that. I typically take that number and add at least 30% because while in a perfect world and best case scenario it might take that amount of time but it's not a perfect world and they'll have to make changes from your quality control step.


Good luck and don't be scared. Think of yourself as a business owner not a contractor.
 
I agree with Skyfire. I've taken on several projects that might require a technology I'm not used to using or may have only dabbled in and have achieved great results for my clients because I am confident in my ability to learn and adapt on the fly. That being said, I have been bitten by the same shit that I'm sure many other programmers here have and that is mainly, TIME. When I started freelance programming, time was something I found very hard to estimate accurately (still do sometimes). Just about any project I've taken on of any magnitude has ended up falling way outside of the boundaries of the original scope, which is why a proper contract is a necessity (don't skimp on this!). A good rule of thumb is to try to estimate how many hours it will take to complete the project and double them. Also, don't be afraid to charge what you and your team are worth despite the overseas competition. You don't want to find yourself vastly underpricing just to get the job and finding that in the end it's not worthwhile for you or your developers.

In your case, your role is that of a project manager and it's imperative that you have confidence in the ability of your in-house developers to not only code the project well, but also to complete milestones on schedule (easier said than done). Software on the "enterprise" scale (very broad term) is something that is hopefully going to be around for a long time and any design/code decisions that are made are something that you and your client are going to have to live with. Also, I would highly recommend that you assign one of your in-house devs the role of a senior programmer and their job would be to oversee code quality, proper version control (hint, use git), testing and QA. All the best to you and your endeavors.
 
Just do it... This is how agencies develop. Demand for new technologies = new training, new strategies, new hires, etc.. whatever is needed to get the job done; and the agency becomes better in the process. You're doing fine.
 
You need to be:

-- Kick ass communicator and available for your client.
1a. The same holds true between you and your development team, or outsource team.

-- YOU need to have a great understanding of concepts, management, end-goal, time frames, etc... basically, you need to have experience in projects in general and know, and understand what can and will likely go wrong, hold you back, etc.

I know a LOT of people in this industry (web development/software development, marketing/seo) as I've been doing it over 10 years now. The biggest difference between me and a lot of other people are the 100s of projects I have experience with ranging from 500$ websites to $300,000+ software/systems, and the difference between an e-commerce site doing $15,000 a year and $2mil+, etc, etc...

It's not difficult for a company looking to hire a team/contractor/consultant to easily distinguish between someone that knows the tech, and can answer their questions and someone who ASKS questions, and understands their needs, and channels their energy and desires into what NEEDs to be done. Simply knowing the tech isn't enough for GOOD clients.

With that said, it's VERY EASY for companies to find people who are "technologically" competent. Finding people with vast experiences in actually doing a variety of related projects, knowing what issues will arise, etc... = where the TRUE VALUE of a good consultant/development company comes in.

With almost every client I can think of at least 5-10 things they did NOT think of. I acquire clients and retain them because I provide value more than the "tech" and get it done. Almost all my clients rely on me to update them on what they need to do.

Example most would have experience with:
10000s of people know how to install WP, or can talk to a developer who does it for them.

Fewer know what "needs" to be done to accomplish it.
Fewer know the CORRECT time frames.
Fewer know what can go wrong.
Fewer know the RIGHT way to do something.
ETC.

There's a reason I deal with the same 3-5 clients for many years instead of trying to acquire new clients every month, and having turnover. I provide value to their company. This is the reason I don't just take on ANYONE. This is the reason if a client is being stupid or not taking advice I let them know they are free to leave. I've told clients I will NOT deal with them anymore if they don't listen. They don't leave. Businesses NEED someone to be honest, communicate well, tell them what NEEDS to be done.

If you are doing work for clients and then your contract ends and you never hear from them again you are doing something wrong.

With all that said...

You don't need to know the ins-ands-outs of the language or platform but you should know development in-depth in general to tackle large projects. You should be ready to learn more, and read, and communicate.
 
boatBurner said:
Matt, at what point would you feel competent enough (between you and your own capital) to take on a project like this?
Click to expand...

I have no idea what the project is. Nonetheless, if you're capable of completing it, you'll know.

What type of scope are we talking about? Just a little outside your depth, and maybe uses a technology or two you're not quite familiar with? If so, then definitely jump right in. You'll probably take a little hit in terms of money, because it'll take longer than it should, but chalk it up to being paid to learn a new technology.

Or are we talking totally out of your depth, to the point you're not even sure where to start? Then I'd be a little more careful. Maybe I'm wrong, but sounds as though you're bidding on a government contract, and if that's the case, I'd be especially careful. If you fuck up a government contract, you're probably not getting another one. Government won't give you a second chance. They'll just shit list you, and move on to the next of 60,000 contractors they have in line.
 
SkyFire said:
Can't speak for you, but I'm the kind of person who rises to the challenge. Most of the work I accepted for years was beyond me when I started it. I still take work I don't yet know how to do, forces me outside my comfort zone, and I gain valuable skills and experience.
Click to expand...

A lot of good advice in this thread and this ^^^ is superb.

How many of us knew SEO before we got into it?
How many of us knew how to make a website?
How many of us knew Social Media ?

I could go on but truth is even a noob is an expert when compared to the business needing their service.

A wise person once said to me '' Let me tell you about what you don't know what you don't know is what will raise your game by a minimum of 10% or 90% its up to you, all you need is to learn form those who know or hire them and then learn''

Excellent advice you may not know how to build the plane but if you can get the engineers on your team then Yes you can.

Congrats on the work though.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Or are we talking totally out of your depth, to the point you're not even sure where to start? Then I'd be a little more careful. Maybe I'm wrong, but sounds as though you're bidding on a government contract...
Click to expand...

This is not totally out of my depth. I know what needs to be done, and how. I have the ability to connect those dots.

What concerns me more than the actual development are things like practicing good project management for this kind of scope. Here, agile development and SCRUM would be good practices, but outside of light reading, I've never applied these methods in the real world. In addition, I'd be communicating with well-educated people - bureaucratically-savvy MBAs and VCs - something I have next to no experience with. I am a good communicator, but that seems like a whole different level to me. Knowing which approach to take in understanding the domain of the industry is another unknown for me.

This isn't a government contract, fortunately. When I use the term "enterprise", I'm referring to the standardization of a specific process in a very large industry that has not standardized this process technologically. There are two Fortune 500 companies that have agreed to adopt their early versions of this software. They already have an initial iteration and have made a small bit of revenue from it, but they do not have a CTO or anyone with an understanding of what's necessary here. Instead, the two principals are my mentor, an Aeronautical Engineer with an MBA in Business (Development?) with a strong startup community presence in his state, and the other guy who is supposedly a solid salesman with 15 years of experience in the industry for which this solution is being developed.

My bullshit radar continues to calibrate, but this is by far the most appealing software business that I've ever come across, personally.

As a reminder, I served directly under this mentor of mine in the Marine Corps on my first deployment. He is by and large one of the most influential people I've ever met, and equally considers me one of the best Marines he's worked with, officers included (which was flattering to hear - just an idea of our working relationship). That said, another added stress is not wanting to burn this bridge or let him down. Additionally, I don't want to jump in the cockpit here and crash his plane, which seems like it has a lot of the right indicators going for it.
 
Also worth noting:

Our first phone conversation ended with me being transparent and explaining that this would be the first scope of its kind that we'd have tackled, and that I wasn't certain it would be within our reach. He agreed to send me the iteration and let me take a peek to get an idea.

Afterwards, I sent him an e-mail recommending he continue working with his team in India to get a proof of concept by month's end (which I think is a crock of shit if the Indians are promising that deadline) and in the meantime, myself and my go-to dev would work (for free - I know, I know) on building a prototype. If it made sense, then we could continue to talk.

He replied that he thought the idea made sense and would talk with his partner about it. By this point, I had decided to grow a pair and realized the poor decision I had opted into. I e-mailed him and told him to hold that thought and requested that we get on the phone this Monday. He agreed.

And here I am, preparing.
 
boatBurner said:
Here, agile development and SCRUM would be good practices, but outside of light reading, I've never applied these methods in the real world. In addition, I'd be communicating with well-educated people - bureaucratically-savvy MBAs and VCs - something I have next to no experience with.
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You'll fuck it up so bad... but there's always a small chance that if you work really hard, day and night, you might be able to make it work. Real world experience > any theoretical knowledge*10000000 (and trust me it's easy to tell when someone is just guessing).

What's the hardest project management job you've done in your life?

Good luck!
 
boatBurner said:
Here, agile development and SCRUM would be good practices, but outside of light reading, I've never applied these methods in the real world. In addition, I'd be communicating with well-educated people - bureaucratically-savvy MBAs and VCs
Click to expand...

Ohhh, don't worry about the MBA guys, unless they've proven themselves in their industry. Now sitting at a table with a VC who has a net worth of over $100 million can get the nerves going pretty good, but once you get to talking, you realize they're just normal people too. Generally really fucken smart people, but still just people.

If you're that worried about it, grab a mentor who's available for consultation, and cut him in on the action. In exchange, he makes himself available to you for regular e-mail / phone consultations for the duration of the project. Go search LinkedIn for people with the proper skill set, and start hitting them up. My only advice here is, don't offer them an hourly rate. Offer them royalties for at least 5 years, or something along those lines.
 
boatBurner, if you want some support before you grab a mentor (probably a good idea - check Clarity.fm when the time comes), let me know. I've been a project manager and business analyst in this space for years (my day job). I'd be willing to help you get the right footing to start out with regards to scoping, budgeting, communication, timelines, and managing production.

IMO this can be pretty smooth if you're available to communicate with them regularly (easier said that done), have all your planning docs up front, and set realistic expectations.
 
Afterwards, I sent him an e-mail recommending he continue working with his team in India to get a proof of concept by month's end (which I think is a crock of shit if the Indians are promising that deadline) and in the meantime, myself and my go-to dev would work (for free - I know, I know) on building a prototype. If it made sense, then we could continue to talk.
Click to expand...

Be careful here.

Great contacts that don't have full decision making power, and funds ready to go can remain just that... GOOD contacts. Don't let your relationship with him blind you to thinking you're guaranteed payment.

It doesn't even have to do with winning the contract, something may come up and they simply don't move fast but still want to use you.


If you know this going in, and are doing the work to "sell them" on your skills, etc, and looking at it as an investment... then go for it :thumbsup:
 
Enterprise clients actually can be very difficult. Not only to get paid from but they also like to demand changes without wanting to pay for them (manager gives you one direction, board of directors wants to go another as an example). I've fallen into the trap of doing something for free to keep them happy which could have easily been a few grand extra and I had no reason to do anything for free.

You need to setup a VERY VERY clear outline of what they want and delivery dates of different items during the process. Put it in a contract and don't do anything until you have one signed. If you are going to develop a prototype tell them that there is XYZ cost for that.

Someone had sent this over to me and it's very good advice.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U"]Mike Monteiro, Co-Founder of Mule Design Studio, Author of F*ck You, Pay Me - YouTube[/ame]
 
Personally I think you'd be nuts to take it on. I would encourage you to start out smaller and get some other projects under your belt first, where there is less financial risk on the line because this could blow up in your face very badly.
 
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