Our development shop would really like to do more agile projects but we have a problem getting clients on board. Many clients want a budget and a deadline. It's hard to sell a client on an agile project when our competitors do come up with waterfall-based fixed deadlines and fixed prices. We know their fixed numbers are bad, but the client doesn't know that. So, we end up looking bad to the client because we can't fix the price or a deadline but our competitors can.So, how can you get your sales force to successfully sell a project that uses agile development methods, or a product that is developed using such methods? All the information I found seems to focus on project management and developers.
How to sell Agile development to (waterfall) clients
agile
The key to doing this well is by use of a support contract. Basically, when you first sell the client, you sell them based of your expertise, and you do it waterfall.That means a contract that sets the scope and a firm dead line. This is what the client wants. The client more or less knows the scope. Waterfall works very well, in a fixed & defined scope environment, I would say it works better than agile in such environments. And in this case it gives the client a level of comfort when the tendency is to be nervous because he has never worked with you before. Thats Ok, Agile is not always better then waterfall.So you have a fixed price contract for X scope. Then you tell the client Look, you are going to want to make changes, and you are going to need us to support you post production, lets set aside 20% of your budget for these things to be used on an as need basis by means of a support contract.Should a change come up during the project, simply defer it to be handled under the support contact. (Assuming this change would cause a serious disruption to the project)The terms of the support contact are as follows Work to be done on a per hour basis, as requested by the client, can be used for change requests or general system support and maintenance. BAM! You are in Agile.You can then continue to extend the support contact, and simply use the support contact as the means to run new projects. Additionally if these hours are purchased and paid for upfront, we usually give the client a 15% discount. It's Win-Win.