Billable Work
This document provides a clear definition of what constitutes billable work under the Agile Delivery Retainer versus the Hosting & Maintenance Retainer. Its purpose is to eliminate ambiguity, ensure consistent time tracking, and protect your agency’s profitability by making sure all work is appropriately categorised and compensated.
The Core Principle: New Value vs. Existing Value
Section titled “The Core Principle: New Value vs. Existing Value”The simplest way to distinguish between the two retainers is to ask a single question:
“Is this activity creating new functional value for the user, or is it preserving the value of existing functionality?”
- If it’s about creating something new (a feature, an enhancement, a new user journey), it belongs to the Agile Delivery Retainer.
- If it’s about keeping the existing application stable, secure, and running as intended, it belongs to the Maintenance Retainer.
The Agile Delivery Retainer: Building New Value
Section titled “The Agile Delivery Retainer: Building New Value”Philosophy: The client is purchasing a dedicated block of your team’s creative and problem-solving time to actively move the project forward and deliver new features. All work that contributes to this goal is considered billable against the retainer’s hour pool.
What is Billable?
| Category | Billable Activities |
|---|---|
| Core Development | - Writing code for new features and enhancements. - Refactoring existing code to support new functionality. - Building integrations with third-party services. |
| Project Management & Strategy | - Sprint planning and backlog grooming sessions. - Preparing for and conducting sprint review/demo meetings. - Writing user stories, acceptance criteria, and technical specifications for new features. - Scheduled calls and meetings to discuss project strategy, roadmap, and feature prioritisation. - Internal team meetings to coordinate on the development of new features. |
| Client Communication | - Answering emails, calls, or messages related to the requirements, progress, or feedback on new features currently in development or in the backlog. - Time spent clarifying requirements for upcoming work. |
| Quality Assurance | - Writing and executing test plans for new functionality. - Manual and automated testing of new code before release. |
| Deployment & DevOps | - Work related to deploying new features to staging or production environments. - Configuring infrastructure to support new functionality. |
In short: If the task is in the Jira/project backlog and is part of a sprint aimed at creating new capabilities, the time spent on it is billable to the Agile Delivery Retainer.
The Maintenance Retainer: Preserving Existing Value
Section titled “The Maintenance Retainer: Preserving Existing Value”Philosophy: The client is paying for peace of mind. This retainer is an insurance policy that ensures their live application remains secure, operational, and free of defects. The work is primarily reactive and focused on preservation, not creation.
What is Billable?
| Category | Billable Activities |
|---|---|
| Proactive Maintenance | - Applying security patches and updates to the server, framework, and dependencies. - Uptime and performance monitoring. - Performing and verifying data and file backups. |
| Reactive Support | - Bug Fixing: Investigating, diagnosing, and fixing defects in existing, previously working functionality. - User Support: Answering client questions on how to use existing features of the application. - Minor Configuration: Small, non-code changes (e.g., updating a contact email in an admin panel, changing a logo). |
| Client Communication | - Time spent on calls or emails to diagnose a reported bug or outage. - Communicating to confirm a bug fix has been deployed. - Preparing and sending the monthly maintenance report. |
Crucially, any request that involves creating new functionality, even if it seems small, is explicitly out of scope for the Maintenance Retainer. Such requests should be acknowledged and then directed to the product owner to be added to the Agile Delivery backlog.
Direct Comparison: Where to Bill the Time?
Section titled “Direct Comparison: Where to Bill the Time?”Here is a direct comparison for common scenarios:
| Scenario | Bill to Agile Delivery Retainer? | Bill to Maintenance Retainer? | Justification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Client calls to discuss a new feature idea. | Yes | No | This is strategic work that adds to the product backlog. It’s creating future value. |
| Client emails to report the login form is broken. | No | Yes | This is a defect in existing functionality. The work preserves the application’s value. |
| A developer spends an hour fixing the broken login form. | No | Yes | This is a bug fix. |
| You have a 2-hour sprint planning meeting. | Yes | No | This is a core ceremony of the agile process, essential for delivering new value. |
| Client asks to change the colour of a button. | Yes | No | This is an enhancement. While small, it’s a change to the existing product and should be prioritised in the backlog. It is not a bug. |
| You spend 30 minutes applying a critical security patch. | No | Yes | This is proactive maintenance, preserving the security of the application. |
| Client calls for a 15-minute chat about their weekend. | No | No | This is relationship-building, not billable work. It’s an overhead of doing business. |
| Client emails asking how to export a report. | No | Yes | This is user support, helping the client use an existing feature. |
The Litmus Test: Support vs. Development Communication
Section titled “The Litmus Test: Support vs. Development Communication”To answer your specific question: “If I charge for answering the phone and speaking with a client—should I be support or dev?”
Here is the litmus test. When the phone rings, the person who answers should mentally ask:
“Is this call about something that is broken, or is it about something they want to build?”
-
“It’s broken / I don’t know how to use it.” -> The time for this call is billable to the Maintenance Retainer. The person is acting in a Support capacity.
-
“I have an idea / I want to change something / Let’s discuss the next sprint.” -> The time for this call is billable to the Agile Delivery Retainer. The person is acting in a Development/Project Management capacity.
By adopting this clear distinction, you empower your team to categorise their time correctly and confidently. It ensures that the client is billed fairly according to the type of value they are receiving, and it protects your agency from giving away uncompensated strategic and development time under the guise of “support.”