[consulting] Contract terms for retained services

[Angelina Fabbro]

Happy Holidays everyone,

I am about to be on retainer with a new client during a period where I assist in developing the specification for the project I will be working on. It's a few weeks of research and design with regard to the information architecture, interaction design and user experience. This will be the first time I am on retainer for these activities.

Usually my development contracts are simple; they lay out the specification in detail, the quote I've given along with the design comps for which the spec and quote are approved, and the necessary legal jargon should any discrepancy in expectations arise.

What sort of terms or clauses do you work under while on retainer? How does your contract differ from one tailored to development? My intuition is simply to lay out what the expectations are - response time for emails and phone calls, allocated time for meetings, what to expect as a finished product at the end of the period - wireframes, for example. 

Is there anything specific I should do or not do?

Thank you for you input, I enjoy lurking this list as you're all invaluable in your advice.

Best regards,

- Angelina Fabbro

[Jamie]

Your list looks like you pretty much got the bases covered. One additional thing I have started doing, after a rather hard lesson, is to specify the site the retainer is for. I had a couple of clients think that because I was a retainer for their one site, that they could start using my services for a lot of new sites they were launching without any additional charges.

Another good thing is limiting the contacts. Without that, you will start finding your client having everyone in their organization contacting you regarding problems, information or suggestions. That's the reason a lot of larger shops go with the one contact/contract model. Personally I'm not as strict on that, but make sure they know you won't become a babysitter to every person working for them. Even if it's a small company right now, you don't want to wake up one morning and find out they have grown and you now have a ton of people on you. That's something else I experienced years ago when starting out and it was way to much stress to handle.

Jamie Holly
http://www.intoxination.net 
http://www.hollyit.net

_______________________________________________
consulting mailing list
consu...@drupal.org
http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting

[Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg]

-- Alex UA

[Bill Fitzgerald]

In addition to the advice you have already been given, make it very clear that they are paying for services at an hourly rate, and that you are putting hours towards a deliverable.

Depending on the internal communications within the client's team, the same set of wireframes could require vastly different amounts of time to produce.

Cheers,

Bill

_______________________________________________
consulting mailing list
consu...@drupal.org
http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting

[Joel Farris]

I like to list the sites I'm contracting for by name, specify how many deliverables I will be producing for the client, the approximate number of pages each will have, whether or not a deliverable will have artwork, graphs, flowcharts, etc., who is responsible for producing afore-mentioned artwork(s), what format the deliverables will be produced in, and what formats they won't. (i.e., 'All deliverables will be formatted as multipage, color PDFs. No Word documents, spreadsheets, or video/slideshow presentations will be produced during this engagement'.)

I also place some responsibility demands onto the client in the form of "All written inquiries should be responded to by client's point-of-contact person within the same business day they are received, even if the response is simply a "Let me find that out for you, and I'll have an answer by ___". Failure by the client to give a written response to written questions in a reasonable and timely manner may mean that the Deliverables deadline(s) of this project may be extended without penalty by TransparaTech, Inc to more closely align with the client's written response times.
--
Joel Farris
TransparaTech, Inc