Agile fixed price contracts

From the perspective of those involved in the project, at least, the advantage of agile development is that plans can be reshuffled to remove or add functions – even late on in a project. Buyers, financial controllers and project managers usually have a different perspective on the matter. They want to be certain of the plan and, consequently, of the budget. Methodologies that distribute the risks between both parties (pain/gain share mechanisms) can resolve this discrepancy and make agility calculable.

adVANTAGE provides you with what you really need – during development, you can maintain an overview of the progress, performance and development costs and the end product is a streamlined, tailor-made software solution.

Our adVANTAGE model is based on two pillars:

• Effective software development with aspects of agile approaches and tangible progress
• Performance-related billing model with a high degree of flexibility and a constant focus on value

For traditional fixed price models, billing is simple. The service provider is responsible for delivering the contractual object to the agreed level of quality and within the relevant timeframe and budget. In return, the service provider is guaranteed a fixed price. The fixed price model, however, relies on a comprehensive specification and assumes that nothing or only a few things will change over the course of the project. By the time we reach this point, if not before, this billing concept no longer fits with the approaches used in agile software development. There is a need for mechanisms that enable decision-makers to reconcile agility and pricing.