Summary and purchase
Cover letter
Our next two weeks
Once you use the checkout process (or reach out to plan further and arrange alternate payment), things will happen fast:
- You will receive an email at your billing contact address with a link to a brief form for the most vital information needed to start work, such as the site URL, access details for the codebase, any known details around setting up a development environment, and a broad concept of the desired work for getting ready to plan the sprint
- If you don’t have one already, Brad will invite you to a shared drive where you can put any files that may be of use during the sprint, and Brad can provide relevant documentation as well
- You will receive a calendar invite to do sprint planning on the soonest available Monday. The meeting will be slated for a full hour. The more detail you send ahead of the Monday about what you’re looking for and how you want your sprint time spent, the less time the meeting will actually take
- Around this time you’ll get invited to the Solve it once Slack. This is purely optional, but is an easy way to request support during and after the sprint
- Following the sprint planning meeting, development in the sprint begins in earnest. Brad will turn the sprint effort into ‘Issues’ on the GitHub repo (in some cases a so1ve-specific mirror repo) and put point-based estimates against each
- During the two-week, 50-hour development sprint, you can expect at least one progress email, and tentatively other messages and requests
- Approximately 10 business days after the sprint planning call, the agreed-to development and content items from the sprint will be completed and ready for launch. Depending on if your needs are more involved than a single sprint, you may wish to plan one or more follow-up sprints before deploying cumulatively. But the site at the end of every sprint will be working software that can be launched if desired
How you can use your sprint
The sprint includes a maximum of 50 total, blended hours that can be used for development, planning, architecture, meetings, design, copywriting, testing, and other vital work toward a launch-able site. If the sprint is a continuation of work with Solve it once, fewer administrative hours will be required to set up drives, hosting, local development environments, and so forth, while a first-time sprint may have up to 5 required administrative hours, leaving only 45 for planned work:
- Migrate content from an existing site or other source, including but not limited to: Wordpress, Drupal 7, or a Microsoft Access database
- Refine site-wide styles and various components to better mesh with your brand and mood/tone
- Create image and video assets to go with text content
- Do branding and logo exercises and refine your web presence
- Create documentation and strategies
- Write copy for Home/About ‘storytelling’ pages
- Write (or revise from LLM-generated) blog posts with search engines in mind
- Revise the header and/or footer for advanced dropdown/mega menus
- Plan many sprints into the future with estimated and refined Issues for all tasks
- Install contributed modules and create custom modules for third-party integrations and other advanced functionality
- Create forms for collecting desired information from users
- Apply a reality-reflecting architecture of content types with semantically-appropriate fields
- Create custom components to extend the frost storytelling framework
- Test new functionality internally, beyond the default compliance-checking
- Present the site to a representative sample of users to test through various cases
- Evaluate the information architecture and user experience needs of more-advanced flows
- Implement e-commerce functionality beyond the scaffolding already included with frost
- Set up API endpoints for reusing your content in apps and other sites
- Create management and bulk-update listings for administrators to see the most relevant content fields
- Prepare for launch with the usual checklists, DNS switchovers, backups, and post-launch checks
- …and more!
Mix and match items from above, or request specifically what you want us to focus on, for up to 50 hours of customization to make your site precisely what you want.
Testing and release
Solve it once Quality Assurance (QA) will review the site on desktop/mobile/tablet to provide the team with feedback. QA will be performed within the different environments to ensure that data, extensions, and features defined are functioning as agreed upon. The client will need to test on staging and give final approval for launch.
Iterative quality assurance performed by Solve it once’s QA will ensure feature functionality and adherence to agreed-upon requirements. QA will perform testing on individual tasks and smoke testing on the site as a whole at the end of the sprint.
The QA team will perform testing on the latest 2 versions of the following browsers:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Safari
- Edge
The site will be tested on the most recent versions of mobile and tablet devices for iPhone and Android.
Project planning and management
Solve it once will assign an engagement manager to the project, almost definitely Brad. The assigned manager will be the primary point of contact for the project. Solve it once follows agile methodologies for project management and delivery.
As described in the table, this will include:
| Task | Description |
|---|---|
| Project management | The PM will be responsible for providing the following throughout the project at assigned intervals: Change Requests as needed, Deployments |
| Meetings | The PM will set up a check-in schedule cadence with the client to inform them of the project’s progress and communicate any additional information to the team |
| Technical specifications | Throughout the project, Solve it once may identify features or functionality that may require written specifications. These Tech Specs will be shared with the Client upon completion when appropriate. |
| Deployments and code management | Code will be managed within Github. Work is completed in a Solve it once development environment and after Code Review and QA, it will be deployed to staging for the client to review. Once work from staging is approved, it will be deployed to production. |
| Work planning | Strategic planning on how to approach tasks and scheduling the work to be completed. |
Sprint Assumptions
Project schedule and price is based on the assumptions listed on this page, along with the following assumptions:
- The client is responsible for purchasing all third party extensions and providing necessary licenses and access to Solve it once.
- All client sign-offs and reviews must be completed within two business days.
- Upon final payment, the Client owns all deliverables and work products as a result of this engagement.
- The client will be provided with delivery dates for known assets, data, and/or tasks. Delivery dates that are missed by the client could result in delayed timelines and additional fees.
- As applicable, the client has agreed to provide copy/copywriting, visual assets (other than stock imagery, for which we will gravitate toward freely-licensed sources), and other non-development requirements
- Solve it once may voluntarily help configure non-Drupal services such as Mailchimp or a chosen e-commerce Payment gateway for expediency, but is not responsible for non-Drupal development work
Roles and responsibilities
The Solve it once team consists of a primary project contact, Brad, who will handle and liaise with project managers, software developers, QA, and other internal parties as necessary.
The client teams should consist of a primary contact acting as client engagement manager.
Sprint Dependencies
The following is a list of requirements and Client responsibilities necessary for the successful completion of this effort and their respective delivery timeframes. Solve it once has used this information in establishing the schedule and pricing for the services.
- The client will provide a single point of contact to act as the client-side Engagement Manager for the project.
- Attend all meetings and conference calls as required.
- Respond to information requests in a timely manner and provide approvals within 2 business days.
Change Management
Any items not specifically listed as in-scope following sprint planning are considered out-of-scope for this project. If the Client desires changes, additions or refinements to be made to the activities, timelines, deliverables or milestones documented in the sprint plan, the designated Client Engagement Manager must notify the Solve it once Engagement Manager.
Within 24 hours, the Solve it once Engagement Manager will notify the Client if the change will impact the project scope, timeline and/or cost. Once an estimate for the change is completed, the Solve it once Engagement Manager will apprise the Client Engagement Manager of the resulting schedule and cost impact of the requested changes.
Changes to the project scope, timeline and/or cost will be documented via a Change Request Form as provided. The Client Engagement Manager and Solve it once Engagement Manager must sign-off on the Change Request Form before it will be implemented.
Your Satisfaction
We strive to deliver the best solutions to our clients’ needs at reasonable costs. If there’s a way we (an open, honest, ethically-minded small business) can help improve your outcome without excessive cost to Solve it once, you need only ask:
- Technology demonstrations
- Our internal documentation
- Rate negotiation
- Boilerplate content
The last word
Thank you so much for reviewing this product proposal for a sprint of development work. We hope it was a worthwhile use of your time, and sincerely look forward to working with you.
One quick thing: All the products for sale on this site are packages of service hours. I will email a copy of Solve it once’s Form W9 to all customers, and (noting that I’m not a lawyer or accountant and this isn’t legal or financial advice) if you pay Solve it once $600 or more in a calendar year, you should submit a corresponding 1099.