It is the expectation that all projects moving forward will be on sprint based billing. The client will have the option to decide if they choose to pay on a monthly cadence for the estimated work or if they would like to pay with each sprint. This means that the project manager will need to work with the development team, PFM, and leadership to ensure that they are sprint planning feature based work at least 1 sprint in advance to ensure that invoicing can go out in a timely manner.
All clients will need to maintain a retainer of hours on hand.
- Retainer amount will be set by the size an scope of the project as well as the expected burn rate of the project. A larger client with a quick turn around would need to maintain a larger retainer on hand.
- 45k Standard offering CEF Integrations project with a 6 month time line may only need to maintain 50 hours on hand for a positive hours balance
- 101k Project with a 6 to 9 month turn around would need to maintain 100 hours on hand for a positive hours balance.
- This will be determined during the discovery phase of the project by the leadership team and communicated the project manager to allow for proper expectation setting with the client. We can give a rough idea of this concept during the project kick off call.
- If a client chooses to do monthly billing with 2 sprint cycles per invoice, they will also need to maintain a larger positive hours balance than we would require from a 2 week billing cycle.
- It is the project managers responsibility to ensure that this expectation is set with the client and to communicate the expected turn around time of invoice payment to the client so that invoices are paid in a timely manner.
- If a client is on a 2 week billing cycle the invoice will be generated on the Thursday or Friday after the sprint begins and is due on the last day of the sprint.
- If a client is on a monthly billing cycle the invoice is generated on the Thursday or Friday following the beginning of the first sprint and is due the last day of the second sprint.
Invoicing Expectations:
- Happy Path:
- On the first day of the new sprint for the cycle, the project manager must account for all of the development time that will be worked in the sprint and estimate the amount of project management and QA hours that will be needed for the project for that cycle and send this information to Kristin. This is due for all projects on the Wednesday of the new sprint or billing Cycle.
- The hours estimated must include any overages from the prior sprint to ensure that the positive hours balance remains intact. This information must also be communicated to the client during the week of the new sprint beginning so that they know what to expect from on the invoice being sent to them.
- Negative projects or reduced retainer
- If a project has a retainer that gets reduced we need to account for that to shore it up in the next billing cycle.
- If a project goes negative, they must be notified that they will be paused until the retainer amount of hours is purchased and the next projected work is included in that invoice. Work will remain paused until account is back up to retainer amount on hand with positive hours for the next sprint cycle.
- Full transparency into the work being added in.
- More engagement on the prioritization of the work
- No surprises on hours worked or overages accumulating and resulting in change request.
- Increased reporting and communication over the life of the project
- Increased client satisfaction
- Increased reporting making time audits less daunting and more habit
- Less difficult conversations regarding hours. Its much easier to talk about 2 to 4 hours worked over in a sprint than it would be to discuss a 100 hour negative balance change request
- Building good habits to stay on top of the financial health and time spent on a project
- Increased client engagement making sprint planning easier
- more ownership over time spent on tasks
- increased engagement in estimations process
- less ambiguity going into the sprint
- less adjusting on the fly for unplanned work
- Building good time log habits to ensure invoicing goes smoothly
- Less at-risk projects
- Less negative projects
- Increased team accountability
- Increased client satisfaction
- Increased profitability
- No negative projects getting worked on
- Less troubled projects taking precedent over others
- Guaranteed (or close to it) turn around on invoices that will help projections for future growth and business-based investments.
- Increased projection on development work allowing for key developers to focus on products.
- Example spreadsheet
DERM sprint export (1).xlsx
Azure query is Title contains [Project Name] and Iteration path with the sprint you are looking for, Set up columns to include original estimate work remaining and completed work. Export to CSV and clean up and save. Send to client with PSR and invoice.