Long Term Application Support

[jbylsma]

Hi all,

I provide software development services and have a question on the subject of long-term application support.

I have a client for whom I developed an app over 2 years ago. He was totally happy with it and gave me a great review. However, he comes back to me periodically to fix issues. Most of them have been a result of changes in the environment (meaning, something with the client's computing environment or website changed, causing the application I created to fail.)

I'm curious to know how you handle these situations? Do you just negotitate the long-term support agreement at the beginning? Do you ask to be paid for the support if it is needed years after deployment?

Thanks for your advice.

Best,

John.

[browersr]

If the project is sufficiently large and complex perhaps a long-term support agreement can work if you and the client feel good about it and how it would work in context with UW's contract types. Personally I just work under an hourly contract based on the client's needs. This is indeed paid. That said and if you feel that a given problem was the result of a mistake you made and not other factors outside of your control, then you may decide to resolve that issue sans payment. Otherwise software and the environments they run in are highly variable and ever-changing. Work in support of these changes should be billed as any normal work with the client.