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I don't get it. What did you actually do? Multiplex their time so they worked for two clients during the same hour, or what?

by tome 9y ago

awjr 9y ago
I think each contract was for 10 people working for 40 hours each per week. In effect buying 400 hours of expertise. That did not stop one of those 10 people doing 40 hours on one contract and another 10-20 hours on another. As long as both contracts were satisfied all was good. By under resourcing the operation, employees were guaranteed to earn 'overtime' if they wanted it. However implication is that you would be happy putting in 50-60 hours.
- jjguy 9y ago
  > However implication is that you would be happy putting in 50-60 hours You're taking a too narrow a view of it. We never committed anyone to 50-60 hours, that's unsustainable. But by _allowing_ it and building a system to manage it, you let folks work what they want and still meet the client needs. Without that flexibility, what happens is what OP describes - folks work more than 40 because you need to / want to, but you don't get compensated for it.
jjguy 9y ago
No, we'd never bill two clients for the same hour. Very few (no?) T&M arrangements where that would be legally/ethically/morally acceptable. We simply let the team bill to multiple contracts. The contract & dev managers were responsible for authorizing the time and ensuring it was necessary/suitable/etc. A typical T&M contract considers something around 1920 billable hours per year an FTE. 40 hrs a week, 4 weeks of vacation/sick time/etc per year. The typical way to manage those contracts at scale is hire one person per 1920 hours on a contract, then that person works exclusively on that contract. We didn't allocate one person to a single contract, but fractions of a person - based on how much we estimated any given contract would need a certain set of skills: "Joe's 20% on Project X and 80% on Y. Valerie's 100% on Y. Bill's 80% on Y and 20% on Z." Of course, those are just estimates and nothing ever goes to plan - and it's always hard to hire enough good people. As a result, there were always opportunities for folks to do more work - either on their primary contract(s) or supporting another. It makes the contract management harder, but it provides meaningful benefits to both the team and the clients.
Bartweiss 9y ago
To extend the other answers: the 'hack' in this case is putting everyone on every project. In a lot of consulting settings, charge numbers are kept within a small pool of people working primarily on that contract. When things are heavy, they work overtime, when things are light, they work undertime. In this case, a team of ~100 all had access to everyone's projects. So rather than being stuck with the demands of a single client, everyone got to work overtime whenever they wanted, and not when they didn't.

I don't get it. What did you actually do? Multiplex their time so they worked for two clients during the same hour, or what?

by tome 9y ago

I don't get it. What did you actually do? Multiplex their time so they worked for two clients during the same hour, or what?

awjr 9y ago

I think each contract was for 10 people working for 40 hours each per week. In effect buying 400 hours of expertise. That did not stop one of those 10 people doing 40 hours on one contract and another 10-20 hours on another. As long as both contracts were satisfied all was good. By under resourcing the operation, employees were guaranteed to earn 'overtime' if they wanted it. However implication is that you would be happy putting in 50-60 hours.

jjguy 9y ago
> However implication is that you would be happy putting in 50-60 hours You're taking a too narrow a view of it. We never committed anyone to 50-60 hours, that's unsustainable. But by _allowing_ it and building a system to manage it, you let folks work what they want and still meet the client needs. Without that flexibility, what happens is what OP describes - folks work more than 40 because you need to / want to, but you don't get compensated for it.

jjguy 9y ago

No, we'd never bill two clients for the same hour. Very few (no?) T&M arrangements where that would be legally/ethically/morally acceptable. We simply let the team bill to multiple contracts. The contract & dev managers were responsible for authorizing the time and ensuring it was necessary/suitable/etc. A typical T&M contract considers something around 1920 billable hours per year an FTE. 40 hrs a week, 4 weeks of vacation/sick time/etc per year. The typical way to manage those contracts at scale is hire one person per 1920 hours on a contract, then that person works exclusively on that contract. We didn't allocate one person to a single contract, but fractions of a person - based on how much we estimated any given contract would need a certain set of skills: "Joe's 20% on Project X and 80% on Y. Valerie's 100% on Y. Bill's 80% on Y and 20% on Z." Of course, those are just estimates and nothing ever goes to plan - and it's always hard to hire enough good people. As a result, there were always opportunities for folks to do more work - either on their primary contract(s) or supporting another. It makes the contract management harder, but it provides meaningful benefits to both the team and the clients.

Bartweiss 9y ago

To extend the other answers: the 'hack' in this case is putting everyone on every project. In a lot of consulting settings, charge numbers are kept within a small pool of people working primarily on that contract. When things are heavy, they work overtime, when things are light, they work undertime. In this case, a team of ~100 all had access to everyone's projects. So rather than being stuck with the demands of a single client, everyone got to work overtime whenever they wanted, and not when they didn't.