Signed Electronically Agile Software Development Contract Template Made Easy

E signature agile software development contract template

[Music] it's nice to hear sort of Stewart's words they're about scope it fits right in oh it would have been a disaster if he said something different and it was nice to hear some Athene's words fit in really well with what I'm going to say here apologies if that means not quite as as new and original as you are hoping for I'm gonna try and give you a template here on and how you can go about structuring your context and this comes from experience working with some clients one client in particular and talking to a number companies that do this and you might have come across me before in this context and a few years ago I wrote an a a and a piece called dear customer the truth of our IT projects and you can download this for free on the agile connection website it's a tongue-in-cheek look at how the IT industry structures it projects contracts and what we actually do and why we always seem to end up a bit of a winner and our clients don't and it's their own agile connection and it's also the the prologue for one of my books sampan and please go and buy the book and if you subscribe to my newsletter list on my website you can get the e-book for free and that's just a sign really and I want to start by making a couple of hypotheses and because I find that when we get into this conversation about agile and I count contracts specifically people say well that's all very good except in the real world and clients want to award work on a fixed cost fixed time fixed feature feature basically faces this is this is the housing model isn't it tell me how much the house how big the house is gonna be how long will take to build how many baths means it's not and tell me how much it will cost and and as a result of that most suppliers feel as if they have to bid on this Basin because there's customers wanna fix everything they have to bid and that's the real world isn't it so you know Stuart and Dean and I can talk about this stuff but the real world and Bert let me also point out some companies as just most you who've joined this webinar see like I said in the dear customer letter and there's problems to this this doesn't always work and and some people and some companies are looking for something different I also think there's another group of companies for whom this idea of fix fix fix looks decidedly odd you know why would you try and fix everything thebe what you're gonna get the how long they'll take the cost we're professionals and what other profession fixes this do you do you go to a lawyer and say mr. lawyer find being accused of murder and how long will it take to get me off this charge which witnesses will you call what will the total cost be on what day will I go free if I had no sake here in the UK you can't even specify that when you're buying a house a few years ago I try to involve a lawyer to convey my house on a fixed fee fix conduct it cons such a mess I had to hire a second lawyer to unpick the problems and law does not wear like this and when you go to your doctor I'm sorry Mary because I didn't socialize medicine world here but and you when you go to your doctor do you say to your doctor and I've got this rash how long will it take to fix this how much they cure what George you don't say these things are twenty with other professions you go there and it's an ongoing discussion they try something they see what happens maybe cures maybe gets you off to charge if not you try something else you have some more tests and you iterate and you decide as you go along and so yes the real world wants everything fixed but I'm not sure that means it's the only way of working I have an observation the companies I know who are working in an actual fashion the companies I know who are bidding on and offering to work in an agile and I John usually means Scopus fashion or finding that their work is booming they are getting more work that there are not many companies to do this but the ones that do do it have got more work than they can do and they can charge top dollar and I have another hypothesis for you I like suggest that companies that can work in to an agile contract and an agile contract is largely a Scopus contract as a student was just saying you can fix the overall objective build me a CRM system you can't fix the details and companies that will bid and will offer to work on an agile scope this contract are the better companies the companies which are not so good the companies that are not so sure their skills the companies that are more worried about their ability getting next deal they are the ones who will want to lock you as a client into a fix fix fix and so I said I was gonna draw on some experience here and and specifically I'm modeling some of this presentation some work I did and in Bristol with a company called zone a zone digital they are a digital agency and and they are working on a large project for a construction company and initially the construction company said we want we want to lift and shift something we've already got so that they started we wanted to get started it's not quick so they engaged quickly they got going and they decided to defer the contract details until the later date you know two or three months down the line and so they've got the team up and running assemble the team I went in I gave some training to both sides they be the suppliers and the clients and they started working together on an iteration basis they start to get things that could be delivered they started doing regular demos and you know what three months later the construction company turnaround and awarded them are 1 million pound contact with no scope there's an object into this console but the team will work out the details what will be built the features the stories of product items that's going to be blacked out by the team through the joint team of zone and their client some type I'll listen for template for you and and I said it's two parts there's template like what why is the contract and birthday I don't think you can have an agile contract if you don't couple it with an execution model that matches that contract I think if you if you have an agile contract and you can't execute on it if you can't structure the way you're working to match the content then you're gonna have problems so as an overarching principle in the contract it's a risk sharing contact in a traditional contract one side tends to absorb the risk and excuse me the supplier the supplier normally takes all the risk on and that may mean make pad crisis that might mean they've had schedules and it's not good if the supplier takes on all the risk because then the client can push back and say hey not my problem you sort it out which means the client is less incentivized to work with a supplier conversely if the client takes on all the risk then what incentive is the supplier got - worse better smarter more lively so it can be this chair as I just said and the Stuart was saying we set an overarching objective there is a final goal we'll build a CRM system increase our sales more eyeballs and website but and this might look different away and students on that this is a contractor services not a contract to scope this is not a contract there's been delivery 50 product backlog items this is a contract that she's gonna deliver you development services it's going to help you build something and it's a contract that will within the contract you will discover what needs building you'll deliver it and you will flex accordingly and so the contract is hiring a supplier who is also skilled helping you the client understand what you need and what will deliver value what will deliver benefit now you can fix the time and you can fix a car cost that by impatient means unit fix the capacity the number of people who are working on this and also say you want an easy exit contact or if you want to structure as just a role in contract that's fine either way and yes both sides want some commitment as dean was saying but it should also be easy for both sides to walk away if things are not working again that incentivizes both sides for to work well it also incentivizes you to to deliver value when the value isn't there any longer perhaps because you've delivered at all you you can walk away from it in truth you could always exit a contract it just doesn't matter how many no exit locking clauses you got it was really a question of how much you pay the lawyers and how much the penalty charge you pay to exit and so we want an easy exit contact or contact which says enrolling maybe two month period that affects the contract template to execute on that start small and grow you start with a small team a small piece of work a small period of time small amount of money as with so many things in software development the key is to get good and small do you start small and if it goes well you can grow it you have a combined team and when I say combine team I'm thinking combined in two ways you have combined client people and supplier people so you've got people from the client a building this client work together as one team it's also combined in that you have a discovery people and and you have delivery people so discovery people business analysts product managers representatives in the client most a delivery people probably come from the supplier side some may come from supplier and the client but this is a combined team and this approach of having and having all sides represented business people and technology people I called this tech I think that's missing all of that in future the other thing which is going to be a bit strange to some of you is you need to keep quality high and the reason you keep quality high is so you can exit use that easy exit cause if you have low quality the problem is you then get some costs and it becomes difficult to exit because amount of money you'd need to write off is fine and if you can test you can test this because the team gonna be releasing early releasing often and when I say release early I'd like to see them release at the end of the first sprint like in two weeks and I'd like some of these every two weeks if not more often and if a team can't release air then companies often then I have questioned out their quality quality this also means you need a a regular governance procedures and regular governance with you and because if you're going to exercise that exit clause you you need to have the management systems in place to do that you need to be thinking about this so regular governance reviews where you're looking want and delivered hasn't delivered what you've expected if not what can you change and as being was saying we are famous and Iron Triangle here so an Iron Triangle come turns the scone we have a goal the team are there to find out discover what needs doing and decide what a nice value I think the scope is very very flexible as long as we're building towards a goal accessible schedule you can fix scheduler I encourage you to fix the schedule strategically how long can we spend on this how long have we got when does this need to be in the market when when our competitors working and you can fix the costs potentially how much we're for spend on us how much can we afford to lose you set the schedule and the cost strategically quality as I said we need high quality you always keep quality high that allows you to have an easy exit that sets the goal you trust a team that's your context cost you thought you know your cost in our industry cost is people x time overwhelmingly disinfectant but here cost is people multiply by the time you're happening for which means people it is cost divided by time we decides to teach they haven't we can spend and we can start small we can do a small piece of work we can spend a quarter million and if it works out we can spend the whole milliner than two million and her village i'll we decide how long we've gone for this and that dictates how many people you have i like to talk about minimally valuable teams start with a small tiny team grow it as you need to as I said fix dispense to teach me how much isn't worth how much new fourth let the team work within those constraints start small let the big money followed and I've never to skip these two slides because of time constraints here just me emphasizing we have low quality yet locked in and there's my contact details there's some of my books and those that the end customer letter I think one more speaker and then we'll do questions thank you very much you [Music]