Ask HN: Good read about productizing engineering consulting services?
5 comments
I was having trouble finding a deep guide too, so I started writing one!
Feel free to look at my draft below, and let me know what’s missing.
[1] https://producteyes.pages.dev/product-eyes/guide
Feel free to look at my draft below, and let me know what’s missing.
[1] https://producteyes.pages.dev/product-eyes/guide
I've just skimmed this so far but this looks like an excellent resource!
Don’t know how this translates into Civil Engg but I was a software architect for a consulting company that did the same for a segment of the insurance industry.
Based on underwriting and accounting practices in that segment our company built core software libraries that embodied a common set of operations and transactions and best practices.
We would then customize these for the specific client. We would structure the contract so that it was hours billed plus a % like 20% that would be billed as licensing fee for the use of the libraries.
This would turn out best for both parties as we would get to bill multiple times to different clients for the work done once and they would save on the cost of building these libs from scratch.
We would of course factor in some free maintenance bug fixes etc but only in the core libs. Separate maintenance /support contract for application.
Some variation of this may work for you.
Based on underwriting and accounting practices in that segment our company built core software libraries that embodied a common set of operations and transactions and best practices.
We would then customize these for the specific client. We would structure the contract so that it was hours billed plus a % like 20% that would be billed as licensing fee for the use of the libraries.
This would turn out best for both parties as we would get to bill multiple times to different clients for the work done once and they would save on the cost of building these libs from scratch.
We would of course factor in some free maintenance bug fixes etc but only in the core libs. Separate maintenance /support contract for application.
Some variation of this may work for you.
I would say don’t be in a rush to build products and be iterative in your approach, learning lessons along the way.
Some of the product companies are very speCIalized in what they do. There is no one size fits all.
Some of the product companies are very speCIalized in what they do. There is no one size fits all.
Crossing the Chasm is a must read for building tech based products
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So far I've found this HBS article a very good start: https://hbr.org/2016/09/putting-products-into-services
This is also a good general advice:
https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resources/articles/product/transitioning-from-services-into-product-management/?trk=feed_main-feed-card_feed-article-content
I am looking for more in depth material. Case studies/frameworks/books/articles/blogs...