Do you pay separately for documentation from a partner?

John,

I’m sorry that you’ve had this experience.  There may be a disconnect.  We’re happy to provide you with any existing documentation related to work that has been completed.  If additional documentation is being required I would happily work with you to figure out a solution that makes sense.

You can reach me directly at adrian.boerstra@fayebsg.com.

We’ve enjoyed supporting you through MasterSolve over the past few years, and would be happy to work with you to any reasonable resolution given the opportunity.

To be clear Faye never charges for the same work twice.  This is neither our practice or policy.

Well, here is the answer I received yesterday. Not only am I told I will have to get a quote, but that most clients don't request documentation. Really? People don't care about documentation?

I will send you an email.

"We don’t provide documentation on logic or customization unless requested, most clients don’t ask and aren’t interested in the extra billable time it takes to draft that up. If your  interested I can put a request into the delivery team for that."

Thanks John.  I’ll reach out to you directly.

Unfortunately, what I was afraid of, is that David Faye has chosen to tell me to pound sand on getting that documentation if I do leave them as my partner of record.

Christian Wettre is this really the type of partners you want associated with Sugar?

Personally, that is just bad business.

Adrian Boerstra it seems you can't actually help as you thought you could.

This is what I got from Dallin Verdonk. He also said he is not even sure development made any notes about what they did.

"If you pause your partner change, we could work with Sugar on your behalf to resolve the current issues, currently the Jira dump I can get you probably won’t be the most practical form to work with to see what works been done.

 As things stand now, support won’t let us work with you with this pending."

If you have someone do anything for you - GET DOCUMENTATION!!!

Chris Pennington Jason Rushforth Craig Charlton maybe you care too

I suppose I need to be clear about something here.

I am not asking for any code, or any IP, or anything like that.

For example, they did this customization. KSS-21 means nothing to me. Plus I have no documentation about what they did.

That's what I am asking for. Documentation of what the customization was, what was done, and some details that can be used if anything needs troubleshooting, or otherwise.

Hi John Kitsmiller

Thanks for raising the awareness here, I’ve seen this situation arise throughout my career with different CRM (and ERP) vendors and partners.  The headline always seems obvious (“What ! there is no documentation), but as with most things in life there is often more below the surface.  It broadly comes down to paying close attention to what was agreed in the initial Statement of Work (SOW), and checking assumptions; i.e. are you buying i) a Customization or ii) a Customization+Documentation.  I agree with you that KSS-21 on its own means nothing, but hopeful either you or Faye have a copy of the original proposal or SOW describing what you wanted it to achieve.  I would not automatically leap to a notion of bad business or poor partnership, these situations typically arise as a consequence of downward pressure on partners to produce customizations for cheaper and cheaper prices.  Producing the associated Documentation takes time/effort and hence cost.  Even though producing the documentation at the time is a cheaper exercise, I’ve seen customers delay the purchase of documentation indefinitely – or until such time as they absolutely need it (such as your case).  It’s a balancing act, do you pay for documentation upfront that you might not need or pay more dollars down the track and have the developer recreate the required material.   In this situation, since no documentation appears to have been purchased originally, it needs a developer (any developer) to look at the code to determine its use.  Faye maybe able to cursorily review the code and give you a sense of what the code is intended to do, without needed to go to the effort of producing full-blown documentation.

Hi John, sorry to see an argument like this bloom.  Faye is a well-regarded partner and you are one of my favorite customers!  I see that Chris Pennington is addressing this as well.  What I would expect here is any specifications and business process descriptions created in preparation for this customization.   Documentation is usually done in the code itself for the purpose of helping other programmers read and follow the code.  This is done with structured naming conventions and with the use of inline comments. See en.wikipedia.org/.../Self-documenting_code. For small customization projects, this is usually reasonable and cost-effective.  Since there is no dispute that you are being delivered the code, I would start by having a developer take a look at it and see if there is enough documentation in the code itself that they can identify where they need to make modifications.  

Thank you Chris Pennington. I guess I should have asked earlier, that's my fault. I never considered a developer simply wouldn't provide documentation of what they did. But, you live and you learn. And this can also be a learning lesson for others.

To be clear, I am not asking for detailed code, or screenshots, or really much more than what was done, what fields were created, what, well, what was done.

Maybe, as you say, all Sugar partners do the same - only provide documentation if it is asked for, and then paid for. That was the initial question. I am not sure if there is an assumption that one partner will be the only one that works for you and makes changes.

But, no matter what way you look at it, it is unfortunate I was told it could be done if only I would pause my decision to make a charge of partner.

Lots learned here, and hopefully others can avoid my experience.

As I called out above...

  Ask for documentation!!!  

Hi Christian Wettre I appreciate the reply. I am sure Faye is a good partner, and I appreciate you considering me a favorite customer. I know too you have to treat this carefully, and can appreciate that.

I can't tell you if there is anything in the code, code is not my forte for sure!

As I mentioned to Chris below, it's unfortunate this came across as "we'll help you if you pause your change of partner request". That very much makes it a petty way to hold this documentation as ransom.

Either way, I am still committed to Sugar, and understand this is not on you.

Hopefully my learning here will help others.

I want to say thank you to Adrian Boerstra for giving me a call yesterday. I appreciate his time, and for the explanation of many things.

I still think it is critical to get documentation, because realistically, looking through the code written (yes I know you have hire a developer to do that), is not an easy task to figure out what was done.