[TechRepublic] Is billing by the hour unethical?

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Is billing by the hour unethical? IT consultant Chip Camden replies to a member's inquiry about value-based fees. He says a little flexibility is the key to overcoming the disconnect between hourly and value-based billing. Read more Sponsored How much do IT professionals earn? Find out in the 2009 activeTechPros IT salary & skills report. Be a member and get free access. * * * * * * * * * * * * How much do business professionals earn? Take our salary survey and find out once the salary benchmark wizard is completed. Getting expensive software without buying it A drawback to being an independent consultant is that you have to pay your own bills. If there's expensive software you need to use but you haven't bought it yet, read these cost-cutting tips. Read more Cultivating great client recommendations Read some useful tips and advice on how letters of recommendation from former clients can help IT consultants build and maintain client relationships. Read more Competing motives for an IT consulting engagement Sometimes clients have ulterior motives for bringing in an IT consultant, such as they need to use up their budget or they need a scapegoat. Chip Camden offers tips on what to do if you're in this situation. Read more Build a better test bench for your IT consultancy The design of your test bench can have a big impact on productivity and profitability. Based on real-world experience, IT consultant Erik Eckel offers five proven tenets of efficient work bench design. Read more Additional TechRepublic resources   Agile requirements discovery: Tell me a story Having trouble gathering agile requirements from a nontechnical client? Rick Freedman says you might consider asking for user stories. These stories, which are short and written in plain English, outline what tasks users plan to do when they sit down at the keyboard. Read more Protect your organization with updated policies and procedures From privacy statements to usage policies, we have ready-to-customize documents in this comprehensive download, IT Professional's Guide to Policies and Procedures, 4th edition. Plus, download the new Social Networking Policy for free. Read more 10+ IT pros share the utilities they can't live without One way to make your job a little easier is to find out which tools other IT pros rely on -- and then try them out for yourself. Susan Harkins extracted a list of favorite tools from 13 IT pros, whose roles range from consultant to developer to DBA. Read more 10+ presentation tips to keep your audience from dozing off All presenters want an engaged, interested, fully attentive audience. For your message to be most effectively received, the audience must hear it. While there are many ways to gain and maintain your audience's attention during a presentation, getting them actively involved in the message is the best place to start. Here are 12 tactics to get your audiences more involved in your presentation and your message. Read more Product Spotlight: BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone The BlackBerry Bold is marketed to smartphone and PDA users everywhere. Unfortunately, even with improved displays and redesigned shells, BlackBerry continues to best serve professional business users. Read more Product Spotlight: Xoops content management system If you are looking for some serious power and flexibility for your company's content management system (CMS) then Xoops should be one of the first tools you look at. Read more Featured multimedia   Smart Outlook add-ons--screenshots Six great tools for those who live and breathe by their Outlook in-box. View on site Images: The many faces of the smart grid There's a growing buzz around the smart grid. What technologies are needed to make the grid more efficient and reliable? View on site Sponsored Free Webcast: Data Center Automation in an Uncertain Economy Discover how to more effectively manage and automate your virtualized environments - driving down IT costs and speeding your payback period. Featured SmartPlanet resources Rethinking how we measure 'return on investment' GM officially remains high on hydrogen 'Never Eat Alone' author on smarter relationships TechRepublic newsletters   Get the latest community updates, product reviews, and need-to-know lists in the following TechRepublic newsletters. Automatically sign up today: Community Central Product Spotlight 10 Things WHITE PAPERS FROM OUR SPONSORS How much do IT professionals earn? Ten imperatives for preventing data loss (Varonis) CRM your salespeople will love (Oracle) Strategies for deploying blade servers in existing data centers (American Power Conversion (APC)) CDW Server Virtualization Profiler Tool (CDW) TECHREPUBLIC TODAY Google Chrome OS: 3 reasons it matters, and 4 reasons it's irrelevant Google has finally announced its long-expected operating system, the Chrome OS. Here's what we know about it, plus Jason Hiner's take on both why it matters and why it could turn out to be irrelevant. Read more Subscribe to the Tech Sanity Check RSS feed. Get more from TechRepublic 10 boring phrases you should cut from your resume Five essential metrics for managing IT 10 ways to stay out of trouble when you post to social networking sites IT Dojo: Remove Windows 7 or Vista from a dual-boot configuration with the Bootsect command Are you ready for when your enterprise hardware fails? Since we established that Windows XP will be around for awhile, the question becomes, when do you plan to upgrade the hardware? Not More Security. Better Security. CA Security Management streamlines your IT security environment without upsizing your infrastructure. Get your business more secure, agile and compliant. All with faster time to value. Click here for more information. TechRepublic's best of site   32 online tools The end is near for Windows XP, what are you going to do? 10 cool tools in Windows 7 Find and delete hidden Windows Vista and XP device drivers Hunt down hard disk resource hogs

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