Re: Re: Responsibility

--- Andrey Khavryuchenko <[email protected]> wrote:
> Arien,
> 
> "AM" == Arien Malec wrote:
> 
>  AM> There are business relationships, with contractual support, that help
>  AM> here: we've worked out partnership agreements that are a cross between
>  AM> a standard SLA and contracted development.
> 
> May you share a typical outline of such a contract?  

Sure: pretty simple. Customer X wishes to purchase the future software product
(or better, customers X, Y & Z: 3-4 is best). There is a tension between the
risk the customer incurs in paying for future software, and the value such
software produces. The customer would like to pay explicitly for value
creation.

We lay out a 1 or 2 year partnership agreement. The agreement gives the
company(s) licenses/subscriptions for the software product over a certain
timeframe, generally at a discount from list price. Payments are quarterly, are
tied to product delivery milestones, and are somewhat backloaded. Customers
agree to meet monthly at the beginning, review product increments, participate
in release planning, help us develop acceptance testing, etc. (Play the
Customer role in XP terms).

For multiple companies, we develop a charter that encourages unanimity, but
gives the software company veto rights in extraordinary circumstances (using
that veto right is generally destructive to the partnership).

Partners have the right to drop out at any point. That keeps the software
development company on the hook to continually deliver value.

It should be obvious that this would work best with XP or something similar, as
the ability to deliver software releases at each of the milestones, and deliver
working software to play with monthly (or bi-weekly off-line), makes this all
work most smoothly, but I've done this in traditional software development
organizations.

Arien

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