Consultant Time Management system feasibility

: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 00:24

We are currently determining the feasibility of developing some in-house products to be sold standalone. One of the potential products we are evaluating is a Consultant Time Management system. This system will be highly flexible in that it could be configured for most typical consulting scenarios, handle multiple currencies and work hours, will be operating system independent and can work in a client/server environment where multiple consultants are working together.

It will consist of a base component that manages times and projects, with additional modules sold separately capable of handling invoicing, quotations, credit notes etc. Time sheets can be generated in customizable layouts, for different output formats such as HTML, XML, CSV etc.

If you would be interested in such a product, please send us your This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Small Company Benefits Small Company Benefits

If you ask CIO/CTO's whether it is better to contract a large software engineering company than a smaller one (staff wise), most would reply that it is less of a business risk to contract the larger company. Their reasons would typically be that larger organisations have more resources, more stability due to its size, better experience and have a better chance of delivering the project on time and within budget

We disagree. Experience has shown us that larger organisations are actually more of a risk than smaller companies. A large company would assign a limited amount of resources to your project. In many cases said resources would be shared between their various clients. Resources of larger companies are usually not as loyal as resources of a smaller company - less ownership implies less attachment. Therefore they leave more easily for better pastures. This creates fluctuations in the ability for the team to implement your project. Unless you are the contracted company's largest client, you will not be treated as you deserve to be. A small company values your business more. Resources are more attached to the company and work harder to make the company a success, implying they will take better care of you. They have less incentive to leave for other opportunities because they are employed not for the money, but for helping realise the vision of that company.

There is something magical about small companies when it comes to their ability to serve your needs.

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Have you ever wondered why software always have bugs (defects) in? Surely when you buy a toaster you expect it to work perfectly until the day it breaks completely. Surely you expect your hard disk drive in your computer to work flawlessly - never to loose any data.

So why do we tolerate software bugs? Because it is virtually impossible to build modern, complex software systems to cater for all possible scenarios simply due to the vast amount of permutations of unforseen circumstances. A typical medium size project can consist of about 50 000 lines of OO code (highly simplified), with about 1200 code branches. Testing all those code paths quickly explodes into an impossibly large number - similar to the total combinations of possible chess games...