From a contractor’s perspective:

Great post. I’ve been thinking this myself over the last years. I’m becoming increasingly like that “print mentality” clique as time goes by – in that I don’t want to support my own projects forever. However, I also don’t want to leave my clients in the cold. If I don’t get the in-house team up to speed with the architecture, code and maintenance aspects of the project, inevitably the phone that rings when support is needed will be mine.

This isn’t a bad thing necessarily as it means there’s a constant flow of income. It does, however, add up over time; and accumulates rapidly with even the smallest number of clients. This may be to the detriment of current projects and also on the time I have to learn new things to keep up with the industry – there are only so many hours in a day.

In most industries it follows that it’s twice as hard to get new clients as it is to keep old ones and so you should keep the old clients happy. Why is it then that as developers we always seem so eager to move on to the next thing? Are we causing ourselves more stress than necessary? I thrive on new and exciting, it’s no secret – maintenance of existing projects becomes tiresome with age, but I think there’s a business opportunity here that could be explored…

This is a great post. It details and explains a problem I recognized a few years ago, though I never really tried figuring it out in the way you have. It makes sense.

Over the last 4-5 years that I’ve been doing fulltime freelance contract work, I’ve moved away from fixed priced projects and into what I call “retainer” projects.

My retainers consist of a set number of hours per week and month. This are usually set for 6 month spans, and are often renewed. By not having to worry about defining a scope, my clients and I are able to do exactly what you discuss: Design what we think will be good, push it live and then tweak the hell out of it.

It also has the affect of giving me a some-what normal income that I can count on month-to-month.

Again, great post.

Thanks for the post. I think this is an issue that the industry needs to address. One of the things I have liked about being an in-house designer is that I could have a very open approach to projects and go back and improve sites as the need arose or I came up with a better solution.

I really like Clearleft’s approach. I am really impressed with how they do business.

“No design survives contact with the user” is a great statement.

As a software developer, I realize that designers are facing the same problem as programmers – it’s near impossible to anticipate everything up front.

Programmers invented agile methods and evolutionary design a while back ostensibly to do much less front-loading and a lot more incremental back-loading on their projects. That is, doing more on the fly work in direct response to customer and user needs.

I share your prediction that there will be more ongoing, open-ended design projects where the work product becomes incrementally evolutionary and thereby more responsive to user whim.

Though far from ideal, my company has tried to address this since our inception in ‘97. We’ve always offered a hosting and maintenance package that includes 1 hour of updates every month. Most small or mid-sized clients choose this over managing their own hosting.

Unfortunately, few clients see value in the great points you bring up — small interface tweaks, usability enhancements, copy-writing flows, etc. Almost all the “maintenance” ends up being requests for new features.

Other clients foresee more maintenance and request multi-hour retainers. Still, almost all the time gets spent adding new features instead of refining existing ones.

Ultimately it’s educating the client or working with clients who have a similar mindset. It’s difficult to justify spending 6 non-billable hours in meetings explaining to stakeholders why tweaking the checkout form will help. Then spend 2-billable hours making the tweaks, then 6 more non-billable hours explaining why the change didn’t have an immediate effect.

WOW ! like this post, i was reading this book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” they have a quote in there , ” no plan survives contact with the enemy ” interesting way it has been applied here , I’ve come across this issue many times , finally someone is able to put into words, the client’s requirements are always changing and they assume the designer/agency will always be there to help/accommodate them , i always suggest they pay/purchase/buy time in advance like a retainer fee for set amount of hours e.g, 10 hours at rate pr/hr and when that runs out load up again ? otherwise its back and forth and just not productive , great article !!

This is a fascinating point. I think the problem predates web development and was a problem way back when all software developments were applications for employees to use. Academics spotted the problem, but their work didn’t really percolate through to the consciousness of the practitioners.

Lewis & Rieman, Holmlid & Artman, and Grudin all made similar points regarding procurement, external suppliers and contracts.

Their conclusions were that using external suppliers was likely to have a damaging impact on the usability of the application.

WIth external contracts there is more pressure and temptation to go for a traditional linear approach.

Effective usability engineering must require iteration, which in turn must require flexible contracts with estimates and costs being revised repeatedly. This is a frightening prospect for both sides; with the supplier scared of being committed to a job which cannot be sized effectively, and the client equally scared of being tied into a contract with no cost cap, and no easy exit without writing off the work already paid for.

In 1995 a workshop was held by the ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction to consider the challenges of introducing usability to US government developments. In addition to the general problems faced by all IT projects the participants concluded very few invitations to ternder mentioned usability beyond vague and subjective aspirations. Suppliers naturally didn’t build into their costing any features that were not explicitly mandated, and even after winning the contract were reluctant to provide them lest they get a reputation for cost over-runs.

Of course none of this necessarily means that external suppliers will do a bad job; far from it. What it does mean is that the external, agency, relationship contains problems that must be explicitly acknowledged and addressed. Too often the implicit assumption is that using an external supplier is a risk-free option if they can be tied down to a tight contract. That sets up an adversarial relationship that is poison to the flexible approach that is essential if the relationship is really going to work.

Finally, I smiled at the quote, “no design survives contact with the user”. I recognised Moltke’s famous aphorism, “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”.

The user as enemy? That really exemplifies the very worst of the “agency problem”.

This is one of the main reasons I recently went from working for a design agency to a startup. One friend likened it to “going from florist to gardener.”

You’re right. Open ended engagements can work. But open ended relationships need to be written in a way that improves the agency/client relationship, specifically the comp model. To truly make an open ended arrangement work, the agency should put skin in the game and tie campaign performance to compensation.

Lots of people have written about this topic (from different directions). here are a few links that may add fodder to the conversation.

http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/01/advertising-agency-compensation.html

http://www.spinsucks.com/prsa/value-based-agency-compensation-models

http://www.ignitiongroup.com/propulsion/?p=21

Couldn’t agree more.

Agencies are specialists at skirmishes. They ride in, cause a spectacle, and ride out before anyone really has a chance to respond.

In-house teams – well they’re set up for long term battles.

I wrote a post on some aspects of this back in February (shamless self plug!) –

http://bit.ly/design-skirmishes

Great perception to a very common challenge for us all.

We regularly work to change the perception of clients who are new to software and UX design that at launch the project is “done”. As you said, this is far from the truth, though sometimes an uphill battle due to budgets. James Christie said it well, when referring to traditional contracts poisoning a flexible environment, where the best apps are born and grown.

My team has a thirst to nurture a project to break-through, which drives our desire to build our own communities and web apps. I wonder how many of the best web apps were born out of the same desire.

As agencies, we must educate our clients to build the environment that equalizes the agency problem.

I think it’ll be very similar to what web design companies offer. They sell the design and build of the website but they also sell a maintenance aspect for any small updates and changes to the website – usually a number of hours each month.

Design agencies can offer the same facility to cope with any ongoing changes to design.

This “problem” provides an opportunity where companies (meaning agencies) can close the gap for smaller businesses who don’t have their own in house team but need something like one. By providing this service it becomes like a symbiosis and that type of relationship or business model can be sustainable and rewarding.

We switched to this model about 4-5 years ago and never looked back.

Josh,

Great points! They fall right in line with the thinking behind our approach to projects and client relationships.

As I read this, I shouted in my mind, “Aha! That’s why it’s all about the long-term relationship!” A typical web project for us at Newfangled can take anywhere from 6-9 months, from initial consulting, through prototyping, design, build, design application, quality control, content entry and going live. It’s a long, involved process during which we build a very close relationship with our clients. Why would we ever walk away from one another after go-live? We, as the web partner, are best positioned to know exactly how to assist in the continued use and growth of the client’s website, not to mention their web marketing and content strategies *as they evolve* (not just backing up the initial “big idea”. Our Total Managed Support model was created specifically for this- because the tools we build are only as valuable as the expertise and relationship upon which they are built- what it means is that the Project Management teams that work with our clients during the initial project provide regular, proactive service to our clients moving forward, making strategic suggestions, assisting in data analysis, planning the functional growth of the application, etc.

If you haven’t, check out Mitch Joel’s blog post on why marketing should move away from “the big idea” model, which is along similar lines to your thinking.

Chris Butler, Newfangled