Running agile delivery inside a fixed budget
Fixed budgets and iterative delivery are compatible if scope is the variable. Fixing all three is what causes trouble.
ZooBieDoo Infotech Engineering TeamRead
Key takeaways
- Get the names and seniority of the actual team in the agreement.
- Ask for a specific example of a project that went wrong.
- Agree IP, exit assistance and handover terms at the start.
- The quality of their questions predicts the quality of delivery.
Ask who actually does the work
A common practice is bidding with senior profiles and staffing with juniors. Ask for the names and levels of the people who will be on your engagement, and ask for that composition to form part of the agreement.
Ask to meet the delivery lead rather than only the salesperson. The difference in how they discuss risk is usually informative.
Ask how they handle bad news
Every engagement encounters problems. What separates suppliers is whether you hear about them early with options, or late as a fait accompli.
Ask for a specific example of a project that went wrong and what they did. A supplier who claims none have is either inexperienced or not being straightforward.
Check the commercial and exit terms
- Who owns the intellectual property, and when does it transfer?
- What happens to source, pipelines and hosting access at the end?
- Is there a notice period, and what does exit assistance include?
- Are subcontractors used, and with what disclosure?
Exit terms are easy to agree at the start and very difficult to negotiate once a relationship has soured.
Judge the questions they ask you
A supplier who quotes immediately from a brief without probing has not understood the problem. One who asks about constraints, existing systems, who needs convincing and what has already been tried is doing the work.
The quality of a supplier's questions during the sales process is the best available predictor of the quality of their delivery.
Structuring the first engagement
However thorough the selection, the first real information about a supplier comes from working with them. Structuring the start to produce that information early is sensible.
Begin with a bounded piece of work — a discovery phase or a small self-contained deliverable — with clear success criteria and a natural decision point at the end. This limits commitment while revealing how they communicate, document and handle disagreement.
Pay attention to behaviour rather than output alone: do they raise problems early, is the documentation usable, do they push back when you ask for something unwise? Those predict the long-term relationship better than the first deliverable does.
Frequently asked questions
Remote delivery works well with deliberate communication and agreed working-hours overlap. What matters more is whether the supplier communicates clearly and escalates honestly.
Ask each to price the same defined discovery phase. Comparing full-project prices built on different assumptions compares assumptions, not suppliers.
A short discovery phase. It is a small commitment that reveals how a supplier thinks, communicates and documents which is far more informative than any reference call.
