[LRUG] Who are those super short-term contractors?

[David Burrows]

In my experience there's 2 types of short contract - small greenfield
projects & features on existing apps

Small greenfield projects can be really fun, I usually lean heavily on
frameworks like jQuery, Backbone, Twitter Bootstrap and a starter Rails
project full of the usual suspects (Devise, Omniauth, Carrierwave, Sidekiq,
Compass, etc.) so you have a rolling start. As long as the client is good
and the moneys enough to keep you 100% engaged you can get a lot done
(quality, speed, price, pick any two).

You do need to do some risk assessment if there's any "here be demons"
elements to the project so it's important to do an early spike on anything
that really stands out. A few times things just haven't worked as
advertised (Amazons API springs to mind) so you need to talk to the client
early and handle any issues.

Features on existing apps is another ballgame entirely, I'd second
everything Toby said about tests and code readability. I've seen some real
horrorshows that had no tests at all and pretty much every class had a
reference to every other class (hypercube dependency graphs FTW!) It's all
too easy to get stuck in a morass of refactoring and at the end of 3 weeks
have made very little progress.

The golden rule is always look at the code first and negotiate a budget &
timeline from there. Remember that it's all opportunity cost - slogging
through bad code may be useful if your writing a book on refactoring but
otherwise not so much.

-- 
David Burrows
079 1234 2125
@dburrows

http://www.designsuperbuild.com/ | @dsgnsprbld



On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 2:55 PM, toby privett <tobyprivett at gmail.com> wrote:

> I sometimes do short jobs that usually involve finishing up an outstanding
> piece of work. As a freelance who enjoys working in small chunks for a
> variety of clients, this can be a good way of getting more work down the
> line.
>
> Before taking on the work, though, I'll always ask to see the code. Alarm
> bells will ring if there are no tests or the code is complex and hard to
> follow.
>
> An important point, for me, is why the client needs the work done. I'd be
> keen to know why the previous developer is no longer available.
>
> If there is a fairly standard rails stack and it's hosted on heroku, for
> example, setting up an environment need not take long. For 2-3 weeks work I
> think it's fine to spend a day or two getting up to speed.
>
> Btw, I have a couple of weeks free if anyone has any short-term / remote
> jobs that need doing?
>
>
> On 20 November 2012 13:39, Priit Tamboom <priit at gitlab.eu> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> About super-short-term contracting[1], I haven't solved a puzzle about
>> clients who are looking for super short-term, say 2-3 weeks custom
>> development contractors. I mean seriously?
>>
>> Usually our team politely ignore those requests but occasionally we still
>> stumble up here and there.
>>
>> Therefore I wonder who are those contractors who are willing to jump into
>> a domain and hack there only for few weeks or even few days? It looks
>> immensely wasteful for a developer to set up a new environment, learn all
>> the project specific requirements, new work-flow tweaks, new people and new
>> goals. Just for a few weeks, can't be productive!
>>
>> Do I missing the point? Are those short-term fanfare just for testing
>> waters for both sides in order to commit into long term relation later on?
>>
>> Puzzled,
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>> Priit
>>
>> [1] For background, our team mostly operates in Nord Europe region and we
>> have requirement for at least 6 month contract before we decide invest into
>> client and their goals seriously. So far this has yield best outcome for
>> both sides.
>>
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