Software Prototypes into Finished Products? 55
blastedtokyo asks: "With all the talk of offshoring and outsourcing, it seems that taking an entrepreneurial route is a great way to take your life out of the hands of overpaid goons and put it squarely in the hands of an underpaid one. Without an organized team of coders, testers, and designers it seems very tough for a single person to get started in anything other than consulting, or selling stuff on eBay. With my background in product design, and my knowledge that my coding skills aren't the greatest, I'd like to find a vendor or team to help develop some software ideas that I've been stewing over for a while. In other words, I've got the business plan, some credit-cards ready to be maxed out, the bitmap-demo and the specs for a few possible projects, but would like to get a team to code up a working prototype suitable to get some initial customer evaluations. Does anyone have experience sourcing such a vendor? How would you interview a firm to know that their staff is easy to work with and competent? Is it possible to do something like this without delays, excessive mis-communications and cost overruns, or is it better to just start hiring contractors, one at a time?"
a different business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
Aren't really most good software companies built not on making one good product and selling it perpetually, but continually improving that product and creating new ones as well?
Don't pay now (Score:4, Interesting)
RentaCoder.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Contact us. (Score:5, Interesting)
That, of course, is the issue, and what elevates this post (in my mind, at least) above an ad. You don't seem to want someone who can build you a particular widget, you seem to want a partner that will assume some of the risk of launching a venture. And that is a very, very different thing. Craig's List is full of crap from people who have a great idea... "all we need is all of that other stuff, and a website, and we'll be rich. Wanna do the website?"
My advice: "unask the question". You really seem to want a partner. You're concerned with managing timing, cost-overruns, etc., and clearly don't have the finances to build a company to keep that in house. So, you need to sell your idea to someone who does have the resources and ability to share the risk. Think of this as low-end VC. How does one get (low end) VC? Go sell it to people.
Like I said, if you want code in exchange for money, sure, we'll give you whatever you want, it will be priced fairly, delivered on time, and be generally well done. You can get this from a lot of places (although I must say we provide nice perks for using us, and we write *excellent* code.). If this is your angle, lots of people can give you what you want, and analysing who is best to provide it is a business decision. Weigh cost vs. expected outcome, based on the history of the vendor. Ask for references. When you pick someone, stay on top of the process while it is going on, and don't be afraid of calling bullshit when you see it. Also, don't call bullshit when something isn't. Make sure that changes don't derail the project.
Simple, right?
There's the problem.
XP (Score:4, Interesting)
Hire a couple people who have experience with extreme programming (XP). They'll deliver exactly what you want, without bugs*, with a release every week.
You tell them the most important things to do, and they'll do them in order of your priority (not some made-up technical priority). They won't do other things that they think are nice, just the parts that you ask them for. Hopefully, you'll ask them for only what is needed for your demos.
The weekly releases are key; you can see exactly what's happening. You don't have to wait 6 months to find out that the program doesn't really work, or doesn't do what you want it to do. You'll also quickly get a usable program that does the few things that you need to demo. If at that point you realize that your product idea wasn't so hot after all, you've just saved a lot of money over what you would have spent if you hired a team that wanted to spend all kinds of time creating a flowery design and building infrastructure.
As far as hiring XP types, try to find a local XP person who is well-respected and ask him or her for some leads. Maybe get a technical friend to help interview the programmers. But be sure to hire people who have experience working this way. You don't want to pay them to learn how do release software incrementally.
(*By "without bugs", I mean "without known bugs". Lots of people write software and leave a lot of bugs in until the end. That hurts demos. XP people will fix buggy code as soon as they see it. And they'll write automated tests to make sure that bug never shows up again.)
Re:First Find A Great Project Manager (Score:3, Interesting)
This is far to broad of a generalization. I own a software development consulting firm and I can tell you that billable hours *do not* come before completing the project and doing, not just a good job, but an exceptional job. I do business with consultants every day who hold the same attitude. In fact, I would say that the majority of consultants out there hold a similar attitude. If they didn't they wouldn't be in business very long.
Re:XP (Score:2, Interesting)
well
however
once upon a time, there was a task to solve, it was about developing of an algorithm, mix of known stuff tuned to a problem, with all the options which are needed and none of those which are useless
i faced a first set of technical questions, like which platform, which language, which methods
after two days of evaluating all the options i have, i've chosen perl
i've chosen perl for implementation of an algorithm which was supposed to do milions of iterations to find a reasonably good solution in a short time
of course, it was slow, results which i needed in 2 minutes i've got in 15 minutes
at the same time, i was fast as a hell in modifying, adding new features, removing obsolete ones
after couple of weeks having a good feedback, i came to a point when i was able to say: well, my algo supports all what i will need for next year and still isn't bloated
this was the point when i would accept XP, to rewrite what i have, fast and cleanly
i was already aware of the result, and i was able to define WHAT -> exactly, because i had perl source
what i want to say is, that with XP, or actually with outsourcing in general, you need to have a detailed plan
without a detailed plan you are going to loose control over the things
you need to understand the things, sometimes to the last detail; or you need someone who can do this for you -> and it has to be something whom you can really trust
if you have just some ideas, it means you have no source code, no plan
the idea is somewhere in your brain and still misses some details -> this is something you can never spec out; at least that's what i think
you will need first change, then the second one, and you will already leave the safe waters of original contract
Re:RentaCoder (Score:2, Interesting)