How We Do Business

We are easy to do business with. We use proven techniques to ensure that our work is responsive to your needs, clear, concise, and timely. Whenever practical, we prefer to work on a fixed-price basis. For fixed price engagements to be effective, we spend the time up-front making sure that we have a clearly defined, measurable, and agreed upon set of project deliverables. The following elements are part of that process.

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Problem Definition

All projects need to have clear and measurable deliverables. Typically, we will define between three and five deliverables for every fixed-price project. This requires us to understand the important business, technical, and operational characteristics before the project begins. This work is done on our dime. We would rather walk away from a project than to begin one with ill-defined deliverables. Our clients value this approach because a well-defined project saves them time, effort, and money.

Letter of Understanding

Sometime problems are inherently complex and they need structure. Sometimes clients don't really know what they need but seeing the options in black and white can be of tremendous benefit. To quickly bring order to those types of situations we produce a Letter of Understanding.

We begin by talking with a client to develop a good understanding of the problem they are trying to solve, their requirements, priorities, resources, constraints, and other practical considerations. We then discuss with them various ways to structure an engagement to address their needs. To make sure that we heard it right, we play back our understanding of the situation together with our recommendations in a short, detailed document we call a Letter of Understanding. Then together we refine the Letter of Understanding, as necessary, until it properly captures the project objectives, constraints and deliverables. In all cases, agreement on the content of this document and the project deliverables lays the groundwork for success.

Statement of Work and Contracts

We use two formal documents to describe the business relationship between SystemExperts™ and its clients. Our Consulting Services Agreement describes the legal terms and conditions surrounding the provision of the professional services. Our standard Consulting Services Agreement is less than two pages long.

A Statement of Work is a companion document to the Consulting Services Agreement. It defines the project specific deliverables, acceptance criteria, milestones, and project cost. A typical Statement of Work is one to two pages in length.

Consistent with our basic tenet of being easy to do business with, these documents are concise, complete, and easy to understand.

Deliverables

Our deliverables, whether they are in the form of a document, a presentation, or software, are distinct in their quality, brevity and clarity. Our clients appreciate having measurable milestones and understanding where we are in each project at all times. Our methodologies ensure that there is never a disagreement over when a project is "done."