NYCPHP Meetup

[Jerry B. Altzman]

On 12/22/2005 7:20 AM, Cliff Hirsch wrote:
> On the flip side, I occasionally would like to outsource "pieces" but am
> always nervous unless I have a REALLY concrete spec. And most often, by
> the time I have written a spec to the level of detail required, I've
> written the code. It would be wonderful to be able to hand over a
> "fuzzy" spec. and allow the contractor to develop open-ended based on it

Having done a lot of this type of work, typically even if the spec is 
detailed, there are plenty of other little details that you're leaving 
out, so there's still value in sending it out.

> and an interactive process. Is there any way to do this without getting

It's always an interactive process, unless your specs are written in 
stone by the finger of Dog and handed down from atop a smoke-covered 
desert mountain. (In fact, the idea of iterative specs is the 
cornerstone of all those "agile" software development dogmata.)

> royally screwed other than trust and faith?

If the guy is "good", trust and faith is enough and the contract is 
superfluous. He does the work, and you pay him.

If the guy is "bad", trust and faith *and* a contract won't be enough in 
any case.

Much of the contracting world is based on trust; you live and die by it. 
I've recently been an observer to a dispute between a contractor and his 
client; the contractor simply failed to deliver repeatedly.
I will decline to make further commentary other than to say that I was 
neither the client nor the contractor.

//jbaltz
-- 
jerry b. altzman        jbaltz at altzman.com              KE3ML
thank you for contributing to the heat death of the universe.