What is wrong with Most Big Software Houses?

Every big software house has Stars, these are the guys who are experienced and get things done quickly. The problem is that the Stars are invariably very busy.

However to make you feel confident when you start working with a Big Software House you will probably work with a Star. The Star will understand your business and they will understand your goals. Unfortunately all too soon the Star will be pulled off on to the next project, and you will be left dealing with someone with considerably less experience and probably less ability.

Big Software Houses know this, so they factor this into their quotes. The Star will be asked to estimate how big a piece of work will be. So far so good. Now however the great quote bloat begins. The Star realises he won't be doing the work, the new guy will, he is fresh out of college, he doesn't understand your requirements or your business and has no real experience, so he is going to be slow. So in one foul swoop the estimate can easily triple, if you are lucky it may only double!

However that is not the end of the great quote bloat. The Star will factor in extra project management required because of his teams inexperience, and his need to checkup on them. Probably an extra 20%.

Finally to top it all off, the Star will be much more concerned about the inevitable changes in requirements. Why? Well the Star recognizes that the developers who are going to do the job are inexperienced so they won't be able to write software that is flexible enough to handle your changes. The Star potected himself by writing a lot of 'exclusions' into the requirements document.

That might seem reasonable, at least until you understand his motives. The Star's aim is exclude every change, no matter how small or how reasonable. This is the only way he can insure himself from the cost of a having to re-write lots of badly written inflexible software. Insurance is great, but you have to ask who is going to pay the premiums? Unfortunately that is you! When you want some change it will invariably be outside of scope, and you will have to sign a change request, which if you haven't guessed it yet means you pay even more money!

So by the time the great quote bloat finishes you will probably end up paying 3-5 times more than you should. 

So where you might ask does all that extra money go? Basically it is used to:

  1. Train inexperienced developers.
  2. Do extra project management because the developers are inexperienced.
  3. Pay to fix inexperienced developers mistakes.
  4. Train Stars on how to create 'appropriate' quotes.
  5. Implement simple changes. 
  6. Perform unnecessary extra analysis.
  7. Write very thorough requirements documents.
  8. And finally to pay for their reputation.

Probably the only thing you are expecting to paying for is their Reputation.

So it begs the question, is their reputation worth paying 3-5 times as much?

Tip: How to identify a 'Bad' Big Software House?

Of course not all software houses are the same. Some are small and lean like Base4 Solutions and some bigger ones don't try to use inexperienced people on everything, they are full of Stars so there are plenty to go around.

So how can you find out whether the Big Software House you are dealing with is good or not?

  1. Ask to meet the team who will work on the project, if possible get a look at their CVs, you are looking for developers with less than 2-3 years real experience.
  2. Corner the lead techie and ask him how long it would take if there was 10 of him. Note this only works on naive techies.
  3. Ask them to explain their position on changes.