Agreed. Be careful though. It is easy to lose sight of the goal and spend all day building tools--they are usually more fun. Treat it as a project. You have v0.1's requirements. Allow it to evolve, but have enough flexibility and extensibility in the early designs so they don't have to be extensivly reworked.
I have fixed everything from video games to high-end broadcast equipment. Invariably, the fixes I do for free or minimal charge are the ones that come back to haunt me. If I charge someone my $100 minimum for a one hour repair job (that really took 10 minutes) they think they got a great deal. If I do it in 10 minutes as a favor, they feel shortchanged.
There is an old story about an engineer that walked in and fixed a transmitter (after several others had tried and failed). He looked it over, turned a knob and had it up and running. After presenting the bill (for $500), the manager asked if he was charging him $500 to "turn a knob." The engineer replied, no, "$5 for turning the knob, $495 for knowing what knob to turn."
When someone gets something for free, they generally feel it has little value. The same is true for the "low bid" on a project if it is way below the others.
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Agreed. Be careful though. It is easy to lose sight of the goal and spend all day building tools--they are usually more fun. Treat it as a project. You have v0.1's requirements. Allow it to evolve, but have enough flexibility and extensibility in the early designs so they don't have to be extensivly reworked.
I have fixed everything from video games to high-end broadcast equipment. Invariably, the fixes I do for free or minimal charge are the ones that come back to haunt me. If I charge someone my $100 minimum for a one hour repair job (that really took 10 minutes) they think they got a great deal. If I do it in 10 minutes as a favor, they feel shortchanged. There is an old story about an engineer that walked in and fixed a transmitter (after several others had tried and failed). He looked it over, turned a knob and had it up and running. After presenting the bill (for $500), the manager asked if he was charging him $500 to "turn a knob." The engineer replied, no, "$5 for turning the knob, $495 for knowing what knob to turn." When someone gets something for free, they generally feel it has little value. The same is true for the "low bid" on a project if it is way below the others.