I’m currently working on a project to migrate a client from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce. Since I don’t know much about Raiser’s Edge, I asked a boutique agency to assist.
The agency gave me a fixed price for the project, which was my preference. So I submitted a single fixed price proposal to the client, with the agency positioned as a subcontractor.
Everything started well, until last week. The client wanted a 30 minute weekly meeting as a status touchpoint. I gladly accepted, but the agency pushed back. They said this was not in the contract. Since they submitted a fixed price, and this line item was not listed, they would not meet with the client.
Then, this week the client asked for an executive-level project summary. They wanted a few lines with the
- names of the project phases (export data, transform data, import data, testing, etc.)
- percent complete
- estimated completion date
Once again the agency pushed back, saying it was not in the contract and reiterated the fixed price.
The takeaway
Whenever I talk about fixed-price projects, I assume there is a certain amount of grey area. I won’t document every single thing I will or won’t do in the contract, since that would be tedious.
Instead, I take a partner approach. My end goal is to keep the client happy and deliver a successful project. If an extra meeting or project summary is needed, no problem!