Does Redmine do 95% of what you need but don't know how to get that last 5%?
Do you use Redmine but need some expert advice?
Or do you flat out know that you need custom development and plugins to make Redmine right work for you?
I'm Eric Davis and I've been working with Redmine since 2007. In that time I've:
Written two books about Redmine, one from the users perspective (Redmine Tips) and one from the developers perspective (Refactoring Redmine)
Been a core contributor from 2008 to 2010, including leading the project for several months
Improved the plugin system and Rails engines for third-party developers, modeled after WordPress's hooks/filters
Lead the efforts to refactor the codebase including old Rails 1 code
Created over 100 plugins for Redmine (Rails 2 engines)
and much more (seriously, this is just the stuff my clients have allowed me to talk about publicly)
Basically, if you're running Redmine then you're probably using code that I wrote, debugged, or designed.
There are three primary areas where I help clients.
Custom development. Do you have a new feature you need, a bug that's bugging you, or need to tweak an existing feature? I've over 9 years experience with Ruby on Rails and 7 with Redmine, much of it working full-time on the codebase.
Advice and best practices. I've worked on Redmine installations ranging from solo-consultants to large governments to startups. Every one of them needed Redmine to work differently to fit their organization. Sometimes that included process design and workflow management. Other times custom code was needed to "glue" parts together. But knowing which part could be configured and which parts were missing where vital.
Training. Sometimes the best value isn't in solving the problem but teaching others how to solve the problem. Like the infamous story about teaching a person to fish. If you have a team of developers or potential developers, a training course on Redmine development will help grow them so they can go fishing themselves. Or, em, I mean so they can do Redmine development themselves.
But don't worry, you don't have to choose only one option.
When you work with me, we'll review what you need help with and design a custom plan for you. Perhaps that's 100% custom development to build a collection of plugins. Perhaps it's training your IT staff on how to write code for Redmine and keep it running. Or maybe it's two days of training, two days of development, and a day of question-and-answers with your project managers.
I'm flexible and want to make sure you get what's best for you.
After many years of working together, I can say with authority, that it's a privilege and a delight to work with Eric Davis. For many years he has been the sole developer behind our most critical business software which manages our teams, projects and finances. Recently he helped us transition to our in-house team by spending a week training us. I along with my dev team had a wonderful time collaborating with him and now find the process of updating and deploying our own code to be easy and inspiring.
Eric is extremely well organized, unusually adept at setting expectations, and has an uncanny ability to identify and adopt cutting edge technologies just as they become stable but before they become popular. He is a rare gem. I can't recommend him enough.
Peter Chester Partner, CTO at Modern Tribe, Inc.
I've made it as easy as possible to work with me. You can schedule to work with me for a week at a time. During that week, you'll get exclusive access to me. I'll write code only for you. I'll create training materials for just your team. I'll meet with your mangers for planning.
Each week requires an investment of $10,000. Compared to the cost of hiring a full-time employee with my experience, you should be able to see how that's a savings. (And trying to compare that to the cost of having your existing employees learn Redmine and Rails from scratch... it took me years of full-time Redmine development to know what I know.)
Fill out the form at the bottom of this page to contact me. Make sure to include details of your project and any deadlines.
I'll get in touch with you about your project. We'll probably start a few short discussions over email and phone.
When we're ready, I'll send you a contract and invoice to get started.
Then I'll schedule your week(s) and we'll get started.
Bigger projects are welcome. There's a few techniques we can use when they are too big to fit into a week.
Use multiple, consecutive weeks and continue development. Depending on the schedule and how much work is needed, projects 52 weeks or longer could be scheduled though 6 weeks is a sweet spot for getting started.
Split the project into stages with one stage designed, developed, and launched before the next. This is the classical agile approach where we'd work together to scope, build, and release each stage at a time (a release could be an internal release, don't worry about giving your users an early or incomplete version). Each stage can run consecutively back-to-back or a rest week(s) can be built in. During this rest week you can get feedback, plan, and do anything else you need to do before we start up again.
Spike and maintain is a mix of the first two options. A rapid spike of development is done at first to sprint to the first version, typically over 2-4 weeks. Then we'll scale back and slow down to one week per month to maintain, train, and make minor improvements.
If you need a little more than what can fit into a week, you could get a second week depending on scheduling. If even a second week is too much time, I might be able to accommodate a partial-week on a case-by-case basis.
This is a valid question, especially if you've only worked with hourly employees or freelancers in the past.
The thing is, do you really care about the time? If something would take you 40 hours figure out and do yourself but I can do it in 4 hours, you've just saved yourself 40 hours. And I'd still have time to do more things for you.
Practically speaking the amount of time depends on how much energy a project takes. Energy is affected by a lot of factors, for example:
How easy is the project? Easier projects drain less energy than difficult ones, leaving more energy to work on the next thing
How interesting in the project? Interesting, innovative, and fun projects can create their own energy.
How clear is your roadmap? A clear path from point A to point B is much easier to work with.
You can't really measure these factors upfront. A hard project might be fun and innovative and actually be energizing.
There are a few options for maintenance depending on what you need. If you need a training refresher, we can schedule a new week of training several months out. If you want bug fixes and minor updates, we can work out a custom plan based on how much help you need. Same for security updates.
So far all my clients love Redmine Timesheet Plugin as a billing tool as well. With your plugin, it is extremely hard for a developer to pad hours without getting caught by the client.
Actually your plugin is exactly what we have been wanting for over 5 years.
DeWayne Whitaker CTO, Jazz.com
As I have hopefully showed by now, I know what I'm doing. I have the experience to backup my development.
Enough experience that my project success rate is over 95%.
Yes, in an industry that quotes only 20% of projects succeed I'm pulling in successes 95% of the time.
(I didn't believe it myself at first)
That means the vast majority of my client projects have successfully fulfilled their goals on time and within budget. Of the failures, one delivered a working prototype under budget and on time but the client wasn't interested in continuing the project for internal company political reasons and another failed due to high staff turnover which lead to a knowledge drain and implosion.
Not the typical "consultant failed to deliver" failures.
I hired Eric to write a plug-in for the open source ticket tracking platform, Redmine. He was a great help from the start by helping us define what we needed and how we wanted the plugin to behave. He delivered the project right on time and at a great price. It worked like it should and continues to be an often downloaded plug-in for Redmine users (leaving the plug in open source was our choice). I highly recommend Eric for any Redmine development (or any Ruby work for that matter).
Burt Culver, CTO, Fishpond Ltd
To remove even more risk for you though
you'll get a copy of all the code I develop and training I create so even if I disappear you can continue with another consultant or team
if you do decide to transition to someone else, I'd be happy to on-board and train them with your system
and most of all, if at any time you want to cancel the project you can and be refunded the unused portion of your investment
If you're ready to talk about how I can help your Redmine, you can apply below:
There's no obligation or commitment by getting in touch. All that I ask is that you are as honest and open with me as possible so we can discuss and decide together what's the best option for you.
I'll be honest, I turn down more clients than I accept. I say this not to brag. It's more important to save my time and energy to work with the clients I can help the most and to let incompatible clients find someone else who fits them.
Eric Davis
P.S. I can do anything with Redmine, within it's limitations. Not convinced? Here's a list of the plugins I've developed for Redmine.
budget_plugin
bulk_time_entry_plugin
chiliproject_auto_close
chiliproject_auto_wiki
chiliproject_clocking
chiliproject_custom_css_js
chiliproject_invoice
chiliproject_issue_aging
chiliproject_knowledgebase
chiliproject_message_bar
chiliproject_require_time_entry_issue
chiliproject_status_change_email
chiliproject_time_entry_hours_limit
customer_plugin
google_analytics_plugin
invoice_plugin
question_plugin
redmine_add_user
redmine_ads
redmine_application_title
redmine_backdate_blocker
redmine_billing
redmine_changelogs
redmine_client
redmine_context_menu_relations
redmine_contracts
redmine_contributor_licensing
redmine_custom_email
redmine_data_generator
redmine_download_counter
redmine_email_only_owner
redmine_email_watchers
redmine_event_notification_override
redmine_exception_handler_plugin
redmine_external_signup
redmine_extra_ldap
redmine_extra_recipients
redmine_heroku
redmine_homepage
redmine_issue_due_date
redmine_issue_status_colors
redmine_join_project
redmine_kanban
redmine_language_change
redmine_ldap_user_family
redmine_little_stream_software_design
redmine_lock_users
redmine_maintenance_mode
redmine_merge_redmine
redmine_overhead
redmine_plugin_support
redmine_plugin_tasks
redmine_project_support_hours
redmine_rate
redmine_recent_issues
redmine_remove_membership
redmine_remove_menus
redmine_reports
redmine_require_issue_assigned_to
redmine_require_issue_deliverable
redmine_require_issue_due_date
redmine_require_issue_due_date_in_future
redmine_require_time_entry_comments
redmine_restricted_status
redmine_s3
redmine_saas
redmine_score_plugin
redmine_simple_kanban
redmine_simple_support
redmine_sso_client
redmine_sso_server
redmine_static_link
redmine_status
redmine_tags
redmine_url_custom_field
redmine_user_homepage
redmine_version_priorities
redmine_wiki_comment_macro
redmine_wiki_formatted_custom_field
redmine_wiki_issue_details
stuff_to_do_plugin
system_notification_plugin
timesheet_plugin
P.P.S. Thought I wouldn't list them all huh? And those don't even include private plugins or the hundreds of features I built into the core for the open source and client versions.
Each tip includes a way to improve your store: customer analysis, analytics, traffic, SEO, customer acquisition, Rich Results, CRO... plus plenty of puns and amazing alliterations.