Project with a web programming company

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1

I am working on a project with a web programming company in India for almost 4 months now. The project when it started had a timeline of 5 months with 3 developers, 2 senior and 1 mid level and a part time designer. I have been paying on monthly basis for the resources. My contact person is an account manager in the company for this entire duration. I have not been introduced to the team who is working yet.

We are now at end of month 4 and as far as I can see the work is only 50% complete if that much. And the progress also makes me think that maybe they do not have the resources on the project that they claim are on the project. And now since the project will take longer than 5 months i have to pay more than what i initially budgeted which is frustrating for me.

Below are something that i need input on:

The worklog i got from them have a few items below are these justified?

Login Module took 32 Hours
The registration process which has a registration form along with activation process via email and then confirmation welcome email took 25 Hours
Creating a facebook style wall for posting status with “More” feature to load more statuses in async mode. this took 50 Hours

Are the above hours justified? They do not make sense to me as for me i thought login and registration along should not take more than a day max 2.

Some explanation here and what could I ask to make sure I am getting what i am paying for will help.

2

I would say that those times are highly exagerated unless they’re reinventing the wheel for some reason (meaning that the characteristics of your project are so particular that something already built cannot be adapted or the cost would be the same or higher)

Furthermore with the team you’re saying that you contracted, these times are too high.

I mean, I could need those times to experiment and try to be a better programmer.

I may offer a lower rate just to be able to dedicate more time to try to solve the problem in a different way, to have the opportunity to challenge myself and find a better solution, more reliable and faster of what I know and do.

But if it is straight forward business, no, these time frames are not right in my opinion.

Having said this, there are some important questions here

  1. Did you go for the cheapest offer? Cheap doesn’t always mean bad or unprofessional, especially if you did your homework. But sometimes, it does mean exactly that!

  2. Did you investigate the company? How well did you do it?

  3. Did you have a previous relationship with them? If you did, were they professional and clear before that?