Client of the Day
Out of context: Reply #304
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- sted10
This one, will be a bit different:
A really old contact sent me an email 3 months ago, requesting a quote for some work on an existing system with multiple web-shops. After reviewing the stuff we came to a conclusion: it's a complete mess, from the old insecure server where root owns everything, to the fact that the main system wasn't working without cloudflare (ssl hack). Faked git (manually opened .git dir, and copypasted example config lol). Databases with wrong charsets, sites are running on various mvc-s like laravel, magento 1-2 and some wordpress/woocommerce, and product sync scripts using the wrong url for json data.
It's a miracle how they still managed to sell 90k/day on one site.We wanted to take over the entire client not just the shitty bug-fixing, so we built a strategy. The hard part was convincing the stakeholders to move away from the old developer team:
- The old guys are from India and they are a team of 15.
- The owners are emotionally dependent, as they grew with the old developer team in the past 7 years
- The contact doesn't has a strong position
- We have to take over the hosting so we can actually see what's happening.
The goal was to prove that we can do everything faster and better without asking for anything.
+ We bought a performance server, set it up properly and made a copy of the entire system with all the sites and details as a development location. Hired a proper sysadmin to monitor and manage the server.
+ In the first month we fixed more than 140 bugs, without a word and started to communicate the basic issues about how some of the things are built and what can we do about it. We kept track of the fixed bugs, and documented the ones made by the old team. (things like: mini-search template in ansii encoding broke the elastic-search engine)
+ On the new server everything was faster, cheaper and we were asked to move the sites one-by-one from the old location to the new one :)
+ A month ago we moved one critical site what was still under development and the old dream-team has to work on it.
+ Started monitoring that user on the server, and recorded every single network activity, command or visit from their ip.
- one ip, one device, one browser, same time-frame (team of 15 my ass)+ While doing this we made an investment and built our own version of the exact same site.
Three weeks ago they had a beta deadline which failed, but they billed 140 hours of php dev on magento for the project.
My contact wanted us to help them out, to get the site done before april 30. But we asked for some time to review their work. This time was used to collect all data about the shit the old coders have done.
They spent net 21 (billed 140+20) hours of actual work on the server doing fun things like misspelling foreach in php and trying to fix that by restarting the php-fpm service.
This week we prepared a nice and readable package from the logs, with the new site what was made in the background and waited.
Today I got a message that we have to lock out the old team from all locations, and prepare to sign a service and development contract for a year.
fucking win. so much win.
- Nice! Your detailed process and show the work method really paid off.Hayoth
- Well done!zarkonite
- well played. outsourced india -1 point.shapesalad
- Awesomenessriteshpatel
- So very awesome, but was there any anxiety about doing all that work (im assuming unbilled?) and having them just screw off and stick with the other guy anyway?mantrakid
- the bugfixing was paid, where we took risk was at investing into the server and building the mirror.
anxiety on my end was daily about this project.sted - Nice!
Paragraph 1 confirms that I am so far gone from the world of web design lol.stoplying - nice workcanoe