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This seems to be a pretty common problem -- I've inherited a couple of projects suffering from this, and I've been guilty of it plenty too. When a project goes
by thaumaturgy 13y ago
This seems to be a pretty common problem -- I've inherited a couple of projects suffering from this, and I've been guilty of it plenty too.
When a project goes to maintenance, it really becomes a completely different project. The skills that launched the project aren't the skills that are needed to keep it alive forever.
There are people who really prefer doing maintenance. They hate looking at a blank page, but they're happy to chew through bug reports and feature requests and make small changes to code or design all day long. Try to hire one or two of those people (and, honestly, they rarely command the kind of pay rate that a creative team does).
Client's happy, team's happy, you get residual income.
...I might be talking out of my ass though, I haven't gotten to this step yet.
- marcuscreo 13y agoHmm, interesting point that there are people who prefer doing maintenance. I know of some large companies (PivotalLabs, Carbon Five) who avoid this problem by not doing maintenance, but there probably is a nice market niche for teams who love to do it. I didn't know I was at that step until I'd had clients in "Phase 4" for a year or more, and one of them said, "I feel like I'm getting your left over hours". At that point I admitted she was, and suggested that I help find her another team to work with. I think Patrick's advice is key here: plan for how you're going to handle it. You may not be at that step yet, but you will, I promise. Intentionally planning to handle it will prevent serving left-overs. ;-)