Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
And creative isn't necessarily bad but make sure you think it through thorougly. While a contractors $/hour wage may seem high it may be better to hire them over a contractor with a lower rate. Why? Because they may get the work done in half the time and/or are able to spot trouble spots because of their experience. But it's no guarantee.
I think a good working arrangement and the $$ you pay out come down to 2 things. How much you know and can guide the contractor on what you want AND how much trust you have in him/her.
...if they design something for you that is buggy or has flawed code, they should fix it for you. Unfortunately, you'll have to pay for this ...
Why should he pay for this?
Unless a buyer contracts for buggy code, which I doubt they would, shouldn't the cost of fixing code that is bad from the start be the responsibilty of the coder.
The only exception to this that I can think of is if the buyer specifically ordered the coder to include code after being told that it would not work correctly for the purposes needed.
Or am I missing something here?
Good question. Let me clarify! :) I assumed that the work would be on an hourly basis. If this is the case, than debugging would be charged hourly (whether done before deliver or after).
If the project is NOT hourly and is a fixed cost for completion, then the debugging should be included in the original cost and therefore "free".
Sorry for not stating the assumptions that were so clear when they were in my head!
I'd assume the debugging time was initially part of the project, one way or the other.
Maybe releasing buggy code, on an hourly fee contract basis, would indicate someone was pushing to get the stuff out the door to fast. I can see where that would result in additional fees for it.
Gotta have a good contract (for both sides) with things spelled out as much as possible to cover such a possibility I guess.
Some bugs almost inevitably slip by, but upon receiving your site, you should test it yourself. Even if only a "smoke test": poke around randomly trying to break things. With forms, try to put in unusual values, try and mess things up; think like vandal; put junk values in the URL. Ask a kid to do it too.
A product should be free of "substantial" defects, which I take to mean you shouldn't notice anything after such testing. Ok, now let me emphasize the following: regardless of how they were paid to do the project, substantial defects have to be fixed for "free". If they didn't find something substantial that you or a kid can find in a couple hours of testing, they didn't do their QA properly, period.
After the warranty period, I'd want to make sure I had options. Therefore, I recommend sticking to open-source solutions, since you can ask someone else to maintain it, there will be plenty of people debugging it, it will evolve - and you won't be locked in to your original vendor for support. This is also good if your contractor goes out of business, or if you just want to stop dealing with them.
