Contract & Pricing for Classes?

[Lanette Creamer]

Dear Coaching Support,

I have an opportunity to teach a class on using Exploratory Testing on Agile Teams in 2013. When I took a full time job, I kept my company so that I could still teach workshops, participate in conferences, and share in teaching testing, which I love to do! I'd need to take 3 days off of my regular job duties, I estimate the syllabus & exercises will take me 60 hours to prepare. Then I'll need a 1/2 day to travel each way. I'll be teaching 2 groups of ~25 students a full day course (so the class is repeated twice). Then after the courses, I'll be staying for one day on site to pair with students, run ET sessions, and be available to consult with on test planning, or anything else the team wants to cover.

I checked the price of other paid full day workshops and original courses offered for advanced testing techniques and the courses range in price from $1200 on the low end, to $6000 on the high end per day. My questions are as follows:
1. Have you ever taught a course for a business?
2. What kind of contract is appropriate? Anything I should make sure to include?  I was thinking to include the topic, the length of the course, Payment Terms, What happens in event of cancellation, and what is included in the course as well as reuse.
3. I don't want my course material to be stolen. I own the course material, but the client can use what I give them in class freely to share with others inside the team. Does putting my copyright in a footer accomplish what I'm looking for here?
4. For the last day, I was thinking of charging just a normal per hour consulting amount. Is this odd? Would a flat that is close to the same amount make more sense as it is part of a class?
5. Is there anything I should look out for or put in to protect myself or my client?
6. Is there anything I should look out for that is different when teaching at a business vs doing an all day workshop at a conference?

Thanks,
Lanette

[George Dinwiddie]

Lanette,

On 12/3/12 12:02 PM, Lanette Creamer wrote:
> Dear Coaching Support,
>
> I have an opportunity to teach a class on using Exploratory Testing on
> Agile Teams in 2013. When I took a full time job, I kept my company so
> that I could still teach workshops, participate in conferences, and
> share in teaching testing, which I love to do! I'd need to take 3 days
> off of my regular job duties, I estimate the syllabus & exercises will
> take me 60 hours to prepare. Then I'll need a 1/2 day to travel each
> way. I'll be teaching 2 groups of ~25 students a full day course (so the
> class is repeated twice). Then after the courses, I'll be staying for
> one day on site to pair with students, run ET sessions, and be available
> to consult with on test planning, or anything else the team wants to cover.
>
> I checked the price of other paid full day workshops and original
> courses offered for advanced testing techniques and the courses range in
> price from $1200 on the low end, to $6000 on the high end per day. My
> questions are as follows:
> 1. Have you ever taught a course for a business?

Yes.

> 2. What kind of contract is appropriate? Anything I should make sure to
> include? I was thinking to include the topic, the length of the course,
> Payment Terms, What happens in event of cancellation, and what is
> included in the course as well as reuse.

Yes, whatever seems important to you. Sometimes I require a deposit,
which sorts out the tire-kickers and covers the travel costs.

> 3. I don't want my course material to be stolen. I own the course
> material, but the client can use what I give them in class freely to
> share with others inside the team. Does putting my copyright in a footer
> accomplish what I'm looking for here?

Sometimes your course material will be stolen. Copyright helps, but some
people will copy it anyway. I would spell out the terms of reuse in your
contract.

> 4. For the last day, I was thinking of charging just a normal per hour
> consulting amount. Is this odd? Would a flat that is close to the same
> amount make more sense as it is part of a class?

I often offer a day of coaching at half my normal consulting rate (which
is considerably cheaper than my training rate). I like to encourage
coaching to help them apply the lessons in their world.

> 5. Is there anything I should look out for or put in to protect myself
> or my client?

I'm sure there is, but I tend to keep my contracts light.

> 6. Is there anything I should look out for that is different when
> teaching at a business vs doing an all day workshop at a conference?

The expectations of the customer are likely to be different. In addition
to teaching the participants, you need to make the paying client happy.
I once completely rewrote day 2 of a 2-day training because the client
wasn't happy with day 1.

- George

--
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* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach http://www.agilemaryland.org
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[Lisa Crispin]

Hi Lanette,
You're now doing what I've been doing the past several years, some coaching/teaching on my own in addition to my full time job. I have not done a lot, so I leave it to the experts on this list to help you with the hard questions, but I can share my experience.

You're teaching for two days, then doing a day of coaching, correct? And you have a whole day of travel.

I'd probably charge $3500 per day for the course, and $1500 for the coaching day, since it's tacked on to the course.

But, of course, you have to use Jerry Weinberg's pricing model - ask an amount such that you won't be disappointed if you don't get it, and you won't be disappointed if you DO get it.

As far as copyright, I paid a copyright lawyer big bucks to get an official copyright for our course. This is helpful if you need to take someone to court, but it's not a guarantee people won't steal your stuff. I've gotten more philosophical about this - Janet's and my course is not valuable without one of us, or someone equally experienced who knows how to teach our course, to teach it. I don't share actually slide decks, just the pdf version, and I don't put exercise instructions on the handouts (that also allows me to change exercises easily at the last minute).

I've never written up a contract, I've always been dealing with someone I know, and I haven't had problems. It's good to know their payment setup, some take 30 or 60 days to pay which is a drag. So, don't take my advice on this point, I'm probably too trusting.

I think it's easier to teach at a company, it's a nice opportunity to get people to think about what problems are really holding them up. I've had the nice experience of people in different parts of the company start communicating, where before, one was not aware the other had a problem that they could help solve.  But, my experience is pretty limited.

-- Lisa

--
Lisa Crispin
Co-author with Janet Gregory, _Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams_ (Addison-Wesley 2009)
Contributor to _Beautiful Testing_ (O'Reilly 2009)
http://lisacrispin.com
@lisacrispin on Twitter
http://entaggle.com/lisacrispin

[Dale Emery]

Hi Lanette,

6. Is there anything I should look out for that is different when teaching at a business vs doing an all day workshop at a conference?

In a public workshop, most of the participants don't know each other.  So the first few activities necessarily include a bit of getting to know each other.

In an in-house workshop, participants bring their existing relationships into the room with them.  Sometimes the existing relationships help things to smoothly.  Sometimes they lead to interactions that are hard for an outsider to make sense of.  Power differentials can be confusing, especially if you don't know about them.

In in-house workshops, participants often talk in a language that's common to them but not to you.  I try to be extra attentive to the possibility that I don't understand the terminology even if they're using words I understand.

In conference workshops, especially the ones that cost extra, most of the participants actively want to be there.  In in-house workshops you can't count on that.  When I've taught multiple testing workshops in a single large company, the first few were attended by people who came eager to learn new stuff.  Later workshops were increasingly populated by people who were sent.  In smaller companies, even early workshops can be attended by people with a mix of enthusiasm.  That's also true of any workshop paid for by the organization's desire to spend its training budget before the end of the fiscal year.

Dale

--
Dale Emery
Consultant to software teams and leaders
http://dhemery.com