Well here it is, an other contract. I’m now just over four months in and probably could have done as much in two weeks, already I feel sorry for the end customer. There’s probably other financial angles that I’m unaware of, but the one that jumps up and smacks you round the chops is the front end rip off. Yes, how unusual is this, the customer is being ripped off again! This is just a case of double charging, the customer already pays for BAU support. And now they are paying for contract workers for a data centre migration, but for the most part they are doing – you guessed it BAU support. Just an other way of extracting more money from the client, nothing unusual about that then is there. After all much worse things happen in IT!
It will be interesting to follow this through, it’s the first contract that I’ve ever worked on where they have PM’s using the Agile methodology. I actually thought it was something special when I was told, but it seems that to dodge the shit you have to be Agile. However we have had some huddle meetings, for what they are worth. Over the last few days, these meetings could be called “Puddle” meetings – mainly because the time has been pissed away. It’s not all bad, the customer is getting some work done, the customer is paying the prime contractor, who is paying the intermediate contractor, who is paying the agency and they are paying me!
Evaluating a contract like this at such an early stage is difficult, especially when nothing productive has happened. All the end customer wants to see is “bums on seats”, all the primary contractor wants is the moolah as does everyone else involved on the money trail. But as I’ve said more than once since I started this contract, I could do this myself in a year with a wheel barrow – I just couldn’t do it and make as much money from the client. There is a general feeling of Onward and Downward in the place as one of my friends would have said.