Java Troopers Pricing Guide:


We believe in being upfront, so you will probably be pleasantly surprised to see us deviate from the inefficient, common practice of avoiding pricing disclosure or discussions until exchanging plesantries and detailed requirements. This is just a guide and we reserve the right to raise or lower pricing in response to market conditions,. We are open to negotiation and highly flexible with varying contract structures. Some important additional generic guidelines are listed at the end of this page. Engagements may consist of any combination of our service offerings in which case volume discounts will naturally apply.


Services: Minimum Engagement: Typical Engagement/s: Extras: Conditions:
Systems Architecture S$2.5K for a 1 day architectural review of product or system (inclusive of reading up to 100 pages of architecture documents, product literature, vision statements, business plans etc. ahead of time, and writing a 2 to 5 page report thereafter). 1 day is sufficient for most business applications and standalone software products. 2 to 3 days is probably adequate for most non-MNC corporate IT infrastructures and typical software product suites. Even at the architectural level, clients often want to concentrate on improving particular aspects. S$1.5K more per 100 pages of documents to review. If a radical strategic shift or major architectural revamp is deemed necessary, we will quote you separately for a proposed presentation date and report submission. As a rough guide, every 100 pages of documents for review will require an additional day advanced notice.
Design Review S$2K for a 1 day detailed design review session covering one or more system components (no preparation time is included). Typical engagements follow the pattern of the client's technical team sharing their detailed design via a presentation and/or whiteboard illustration. This may be accompanied by demos if the software exists. We then start an interactive discussion on systemic quality targets and why other design alternatives were not considered. We will also propose alternatives, tools and techniques on-the-fly.
 S$1K more per 100 pages of design-related documents to review ahead of time. If we are subsequently engaged to prepare major re-design proposals, we will quote you separately after we have understood the functional and systemic quality requirements. As a rough guide, every 100 pages of documents for review will require an additional day advanced notice.
Development S$10K for a Java program, library or component that takes us 7-days end to end (including understanding requirements, designing, implementing, testing and documenting if applicable). While there is no such thing as a typical development projects, our rates can be generalized at S$1.5K per day, S$30K per month or S$300K per year for Bernard and possibly down to 1/2 of that for less senior associates. Overnighters and weekend effort thrown in FOC. It should not be mundane software that any novice programmer can deliver and quality is not so important.
Invention $5K to guide your team through filing of a software patent if our time does not cumulatively exceed 3 days and span more than 1 month. This includes education on the process, review of your claims and preferred embodiment and liaison with legal counsel of your choice. If you approached me with the idea, you will fully own the IP. In the course of other engagements (Design Review, Development or Technology Consulting), we may co-invent new mechanisms to solve difficult problems. If patenting it suits your business purposes, we can negotiate our fees for it. Most of the time, we only expect recognition as primary or co-inventor, license for non-transferable, unlimited use (embedded in solutions), and nominal compensation for our expertise and effort. You will fully own the IP including rights to license it to others for royalties. In the unlikely scenario that you engage us specifically to try to solve a very challenging problem, we will probably have to agree upfront that our research and experimentation effort has to be compensated. The client will bear all legal fees, including renewal fees for issued patents. We recommend Gerald Koh of Drew & Napier but will also work with other patent attorneys or your choice.
Technology Consulting S$2.5K for 1 day customized consulting on any technical topic that we have the expertise to enhance your team's capability (inclusive of 1 day preparation effort if necessary). Sometimes clients cannot forecast exactly when they will require our consultation. If they know upfront how much consultation time they will use, we can negotiate a volume rate based on some upfront payment and graduated discounted fees, invoiced as each block of consecutive days is used. For example, we may have agreed to S$32K for 16 consulting days to be used in fixed blocks of 2 days within 6 months. The upfront payment may be $6K, then the first 4 2-day blocks may be invoiced at $4K each, and the final 4 2-day blocks may be invoiced at $2.5K each. See research and prototyping below. For less predictable usage of our consulting time, it is of course subject to availability. If you negotiated a volume rate to be used within a certain period and are unable to complete usage due to our availability, we will extend the eligible period by our unavailable window at a minimum. We will always try our best to accomodate you since happy clients can be repeat clients. However, if you need to structure a contract stipulating guaranteed response periods, we are also open to that.
Performance Tuning S$10K for a 5-day stint at the client's location unless the client is comfortable with us working with their codebase from our premises under NDA protection. We take a holistic approach to your system performance. Often, code efficiency can be improved but sometimes your hardware or OS configuration, network latency or bandwidth, databases or other services could be the bottlenecks. Our approach is systematic and meticulous so that you can inventorize all the potential areas of improvement. We will take measurements before attempting any changes. While we are open to your own ways of doing performance tuning, we tend to favour heavy use of configuration management to be able to isolate and measure improvements from each modification. Unless we are already familiar with your software, we will start off in the same manner as our Design Review service. This upfront investment saves everyone time since whitebox tuning is obviously preferable to blackbox tuning whenever possible. Occasionally, with a good overview, we find ourselves able to zoom in on problem areas even before all the measurements are taken. If you want to be able to repeat the tuning exercise on your own, we can devote some of the time to helping you set up the measurement harnesses. We can arrange to bring a leased server to the client's premises and set it up ourselves. We will only bill you as much as we have to pay for the server ourselves. After all, you are already paying us for our time. We will take all necessary measures to scrub the codebase off the disk after the tuning exercise. For optimal results when we have to work at a client's office, there should be a Solaris 10 (any cpu architecture) system available. This system should preferably have a similar configuration as the production server (# cpus, memory etc.).
Troubleshooting S$5K for 2 x 16-hour days root-causing an availability or performance issue and recommending remedial action. The full payment amount is expected even if it only takes us 15 minutes. However, since you have already paid for our time, we will gladly re-purpose ourselves and help you technically in any other way that we can within those 2 work days. WIP... WIP... 50% refund if we cannot root-cause your availability or performance issues. For JVM crashes, we will collect all relevant information for escalation and even file a bug report on your behalf but you should not expect us to go beyond that. For appserver or other platform product crashes, we will similar assist you in collecting core files and filing bug reports but anything beyond that is a bonus. For OS crashes, we will only escalate it if you are on Solaris.
Evangelism WIP... WIP... See research and prototyping below.
Training S$2.5K to teach a 1-day course to a maximum of 25 students (not inclusive of preparation time which will be billed at S$1.5K per day). S$10K to teach a 5-day course to a maximum of 25 students (not inclusive of preparation time which will be billed at S$1.5K per day) If you don't have courseware
S$2K per day for course development. All course materials including labs will be owned by you but we will retain untransferable, rights to use.		 80% refund if course feedback is unsatisfactory.
IT Recruitment WIP... WIP... n/a n/a
 
 
Additional guidelines:
Research work Any esoteric research work we have to do is chargeable at S$1.5K per 8-hour day.
We do not charge you for routine validation of technical information.
We will tell you upfront if this applies for any engagement.
Protypes / POCs Any development of prototypes or POCs is chargeable at $1.5K per 8-hour day.
We will tell you upfront if this is above and beyond the basic contractual agreement.
All devices, materials and software licences procured are also chargeable to the client and will be handed over to the client after the engagement, unless agreed otherwise.
Operating hours When engaged for a day of face-to-face consulting with your team, we do not limit the day to 8 office hours. We can start as early as you want, and we have the stamina to keep going as long as your team can.
We are willing to operate around the calendar and around the clock at no additional cost to you, as long as expectations are stated up front, and it doesn't interfere with religion and family.
Rushed jobs We will not charge any premium for software, research or written work required in a hurry. At the same time, we expect to be compensated according to work done rather than calendar days elapsed. This is a win-win scenario because you get what you want earlier and we are freed up to pursue other work.
Ordinarily, we will be pacing ourselves for 5-day weeks and 8-hour work days as we are in this for the long run.
Travel We are willing to travel almost anywhere in the world, even at short notice, if we are available.
The client will bear all travel-related expenses except meals upfront.
For flight times under 5 hours, an additional S$250 is charged per work day.
For flight times  5 hours and above, an additional S$500 is charged per work day.
The additional charges will not be levied for one day before and one day after the engagement if no flights are available. If flight availability is such that we have to fly in 2 or more days before or after the engagement, those days will be charged at the flat rate of S$500 per day.
An example should make this clear, consider a 3-day technology consulting engagement that is a 4-hour flight away from the consultant's home city:
June 11th June 12th June 13th June 14th June 15th June 16th
Only flight available dead day Consulting day 1 Consulting day 2 Consulting day 3 Only flight available
No extra charge Flat S$500 charge S$250 additional S$250 additional S$250 additional No extra charge
The client is at liberty to arrange travel for our consultants or leave it to us.
Either way, we have been known to survive well flying economy class, driving compact rental cars and staying in budget hotels as long as there is Internet connectivity (which is considered a mandatory travel expense).
Additional hazard/discomfort allowances for travel or accomodation on helicopters, submarines, military vehicles, ships, oil rigs etc. may be levied despite some of us having military backgrounds. This will be quoted after we understand the specific conditions.
Terms of payment We accept US$ or S$ only. Each contract will clearly stipulate the currency of settlement.
This is only a guide so US$ equivalents will be updated from http://xe.com occasionally.
Direct deposit accounts are available for both currencies.
Cheques are also accepted but when used for upfront payment, we only commence work after the cheques clear.
Unless we know you well, we are unlikely to agree to engagements with no upfront payment unless those engagements span 3 work days or less.
Don't have any expectations that we will agree to contractual terms involving conditional payment only when our clients are paid by their customers. We will deliver and we will expect payment once our deliverables are signed off (if signing-off is applicable).
We expect settlement of invoiced services within 30 days.
We accord our suppliers the same courtesy.
We will send invoices both electronically (reference copy) and via post (signed copy).
Volume discounts We are most open to discounting our rates for volume consulting contracts and large projects. If it isn't obvious yet, we much prefer to be engaged in heavily technical work than business development so we welcome longer term work.
Uplifts We will charge more for unpredictable delivery schedules and excessively demanding end-users:
When you buy consulting time from us but have no way of accurately forecasting when you will use it, we may charge more, especially if you intend not to use the consulting days contiguously. Minimum granularity is 1 day.
If we have worked with your customers or end-users before and expect lots of unnecessary hassle over fluid requirements, scope-creep, second-guessing, micromanagement, misrepresentation etc., we may charge more if we decide to take the engagement at all.
Bonuses We are open to conditional clauses in contracts stipulating bonus amounts awarded for meeting or exceeding clearly specified performance metrics. Some examples of these are:
When average response time for the 4 data entry screens "Submit" transaction drops  below 5 seconds, the vendor will be awarded a S$3K bonus.
Based on anticipated delivery of all the specified requirements targeted for Sep 15th 2008, the vendor will be awarded a 2% bonus for every week that they deliver the system ahead of schedule with UAT sign-off.
Performance tuning is considered successfully completed if the throughput of 4000 transactions per hour is achieved on the existing server configuration. The vendor will be awarded a S$5K bonus if throughput can exceed 5000 transactions per hour and S$500 more for every additional 1000 transactions per hour up to a cap of S$10K.
Contract Structures We understand that your companies and industries may have constraints requiring you to operate in specific manners. We are open to contracts based on project deliverables, engagement of our company for IT services, hiring of our staff as contract staff of your company and other variants.
 
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