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(Intro)

I think most of us know the show House MD, with the brilliant doctor who solves super-hard cases with his A-team.

Is this applicable to software development? Is a borrowable super QA team a good business idea?

(What does it do?)

A team that does software consulting for companies that have problems with a project and:

  • Works with the company's QA dpt, has access to specs, docs etc

  • Identifies and reports software problems: from high-level (conceptual) to low-level (bugs)

  • Conceives a solving plan for the problems found

  • Gives other advice on how to do things better

(Skills)

This team must have members with great skills in:

  • Software development, application design

  • Algorithmics

  • Low-level programming? (Writing code)

  • (Most important) Super QA skills (and not just debug and let's-find-errors skills)

What I am trying to say is that the accent falls on QA skills and general software dev process knowledge rather than on super-specialization.

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Aren't there tons of software consultancy companies out there doing exactly this? (although it's questionable whether their team is an A Team) – the dictator Apr 3 '11 at 12:50

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Thats what startup founders usually do between themselves & sometimes bring on advisers for.

It's a great to get a fresh pair of eyes on to an app, but having an in depth QA team requires a similar level of in depth knowledge of the company, end product, teams programing philosophy, etc. so it might be hard to provide valuable advice to them in a time effective way. The incubator style of providing help to them seems to be way more viable as they get some definite in depth lessons and help, but, of course, takes a lot of time.

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up vote 1 down vote

I think the problem with the concept is how are you going to attract all these super developers to your consultancy firm.

Most super developers know exactly how much they can command on the open market doing consulting gigs. They also have a fist full of offers from hot startups and/or well financed companies if they ever want to get out of the consulting business and go 9 to 5 with some options.

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up vote 0 down vote

In the past I was in a consulting firm where I worked (part time) for exactly this kind of mission. I was the high-level guy, and trust me, it was highly profitable for everybody (the client, the consulting firm, and me since I was paid 3 times more than for any other consulting job). The thing is that when a client is calling for this kind of job, it generally means that he is loosing money real fast. Thus he needs help at any cost.

However, be prepared to work 24/7 when you find a client.

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