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A comment on Companies made millions building unemployment websites that didn’t work. Parent comment

Re:Companies made millions building unemployment websites th... by aplummer on Thursday July 16, 2020 @09:02PM (#23865824)
T&M only works for contracts for a few resources in a blended team in my view, with the only risk being a 2 or 4 week price on getting rid of them. Then you’re basically hiring overflow individuals you can get rid of easily who may have particular skills.

Accountability only works with fixed price IMO

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Re:Companies made millions building unemployment websites th... by loopz on Thursday July 16, 2020 @09:06PM (#23865845)
I've actually got good experiences with t&m, but that'd be anecdotal. The problems grow from when incentives become misaligned, and external work/consultancy is being used against coworkers.
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Re:Companies made millions building unemployment websites th... by aplummer on Thursday July 16, 2020 @09:08PM (#23865866)
Yep it can totally work, but I think it’s a bit of a coin toss and I wouldn’t risk it with these sized contracts.
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Re:Companies made millions building unemployment websites th... by Spooky23 on Thursday July 16, 2020 @09:21PM (#23865954)
Only for trivial projects with tight or well defined scopes. It makes sense to pay $5/mailbox. $500k to deliver a system that does <x> usually not.

Fixed price deliverables are usually more expensive due to bidders pricing risk. Or you see big delays due to PCR requirements. Or the project owner don’t have the political power to not accept a deliverable and tell the vendor to go pound it.

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Re:Companies made millions building unemployment websites th... by aplummer on Friday July 17, 2020 @12:19PM (#23872170)
> Fixed price deliverables are usually more expensive due to bidders pricing risk.

Correct, that’s the only way the vendor takes on the risk really. That was my point.

> Or the project owner don’t have the political power to not accept a deliverable and tell the vendor to go pound it.

Yeah I agree... but if you have 100m to hand out and the in org politics where you can’t tell a vendor to go pound it, there are real structural issues in your co preventing you delivering systems.

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