Hot answers tagged development
22
I think that a discount at this point would exacerbate the problem. In my experience when a project goes over time so significantly it means that it has also gone way over budget for the developer. The developer is now trying to find and do other work to pay the bills to subsidize the completion of your project. The less money he makes on your project the ...
21
Over the last decade or so, I've either had direct or indirect experience with:
A really fantastic web team from Lahore, Pakistan
A team from India that delivered such bad software, so late, the principal canceled the contract
A team from Beijing, China that was well-liked and respected by people at the principal
A team from a different part of China whose ...
18
Stop. This kind of thing just turns into a religious war. Why? Because there are millions of pros and cons on both sides, and you can argue and worry about the pros and cons for the rest of your life, and it won't make on iota of difference to the success of your business.
Flip a coin, pick one, and get on with building your business. You'll probably regret ...
13
How about taking "official" notice of the suggestions, and putting up polls to see which features to implement that aren't on your priority list. You're constantly making changes, so why don't you balance some of the ones you want to make with some of the ones your users want.
For example, let's say that your users are asking for 5 things, none of which are ...
12
There is no need to outright say "no" although I have done that on a rare occasion. You can simply say "Thank you for your feedback! We will take your suggestion under consideration."
It's not like you immediately implement every feature suggestion that comes your way and users understand that. Also, if appropriate, asking questions about why they ...
12
I made a living a few years ago by fixing websites that offshore developers have created.
I'm not saying that offshore developers are bad developers. Communication and the difference in mentality creates a huge chasm between US and abroad.
You can outsource website design, graphics etc but for serious programming I would suggest to look for a good ...
12
This is the same as with any product
Think of some... laundry washing... liquid... selling... product... mobile phone... Something! Or think of a car!
How many with seemingly same properties are there?
Lots!
And do they sell?
Hell yeah! Most of them do.
How come?
They either target different customers with different income, age etc. Some may be selling ...
11
Good answers in the thread already. I just want to add one element: If you just 'throw it over the wall' and into the realm of open source, then it will almost 100% certainly fail completely as an open source project. Open-sourcing and then running away is the same as killing the project outright.
There are way more open source projects than there are ...
10
The lean startup model is fantastic and I support it wholeheartedly, but the truth is, it doesn't work for every type of business.
There are some business models where it is absolutely critical to your market to release a product that has a full feature set and a high accuracy.
It sounds like you need to take some time to get your head out of the coding ...
9
Our flagship product has similar characteristics. We've found with some tuning over the last year that releasing more often than about once every 6 weeks is counterproductive. When we've had updates that were closer together we saw that people generally didn't track with our updates (they kept their older version).
Users don't appreciate each release as ...
9
You forgot 4: find something you CAN do.
THis sounds a little like "hey, I can not even boil water, but i want to open a restaurant, but have no budget. what should I do".
Think about what you would answer to this ;)
Especially "online community" sounds like the next pizzeria - already plenty around. Do you have the business side nicely nailed down, or is ...
9
To find passionate developers you will need to be ridiculously utterly superbly passionate about your idea yourself. On top of that - you need to be able to pitch it to them in such a way that they subscribe to it and believe that you can execute on it. If you can't do that with developers, it might be near to impossible to do that with ...
9
Are they funding your time?
If yes ... is it comparable to your current wage? if it is then you should feel ok.
If no to either of those you want to have a serious talk about a sweat equity multiplier.
Basically your time * an agreed amount per day/week = your direct contribution that is comparable to you earning else where.
You are taking the risk ...
9
In my opinion, you typically want to separate the design and development aspects of creating a website when dealing with individuals, versus a firm that can provide the complete package. Design and development require different mindsets and it takes a unique and/or very experienced person to do both parts well (contrary to what many programmers who like to ...
8
In my experience, offshore developers work if you have a highly technical person in the states that can feed them detailed specs and review their work on a regular basis. You can expect to pay between $15-$20 per hour per developer. I've worked with a company called EffectiveSoft (based on Minsk, Belarus), but there are several others to choose from.
I ...
8
Estimates for fully rewriting code are notoriously understated. It will almost always take longer than planned for a rewrite. I suggest that you stay on course and get cash flow positive and worry about rewriting later. Instead of rewriting, you should also get all of your devs familiar with the current technology stack that you are using.
8
It's usually not a good strategy to build a startup based on the "missing feature" of a huge company's product because what's happening to you now is what I think always happens. Big companies pay a few guys in a room to watch the market, detect opportunities early, and particularly to monitor startups that are building the "missing feature".
So if you ...
7
What's wrong with just being honest?
The next step is to do the "plug-in" or API route - so that people who want to customize can do so, but you can keep your core functionality minimal.
(ala Fogbugz 7)
EDIT:
I understand you are concerned about potential customers being turned off by an apparent snubbing of their feature request. Note that in many ...
7
I don't have a site to point you to, but I do have some advice. If a lot of your tasks are small then consider doing them yourself. The overhead of managing small tasks is high when you compare the amount of time it takes to do the work. You have to issue the instructions, manage the progress, check the work etc and it all takes time. Arguably more time than ...
7
this is Nicole from Rent a Coder.
As many have suggested (thank you all), our service is appropriate for hiring workers for this type of work. I'd like to point out a few differences between our service and services like Elance, oDesk, and Guru however, since those differences could influence the success of an outsourced project.
Selection of workers:
The ...
7
(I have largely left out the business side, as I read OPs question to be about the technology & implementation.)
Do hallway usability testing, i.e. put some people down in front of screen mockups, and see if they can successfully complete simple tasks on your proposed website design.
Figure out how you want to host your site. It's generally not a big ...
7
Take a deep breath and hang in there. Every piece of software has bugs, so don't let them get you too frustrated. I'd recommend doing something like the following:
Prioritize your bugs in order of
severity and importance to the main
features of your software.
Fix the most mission critical bugs so
that your main features are more or
less stable.
As you fix ...
7
Mike Lee famously raised his rate to $1,000 per hour for iPhone apps. That's a pricing anomaly, of course, but the consensus seems to be that rates for freelance mobile developers in the U.S. range from $100 to $150 per hour.
I would say that obtaining even those rates is dependent on a host of factors:
Portfolio of previous successes
Proven ability to ...
7
If I were him I would not assign it either.
One thing he can do is grant a non-transferable license that allows you/your company to use the framework but you can't modify, sell or re-assign that license or the framework to any other entity.
He should probably get compensation for that as well. For two reasons:
it is only fair
if it ever comes up ...
7
There's been a ton of research and writing in this area. It's been pretty clearly demonstrated that there is a geometric complexity in the relationships between developers. This means that a second developer's productivity may well not be simply additive in terms of raw productive output and multiple developers will often actually reduce the overall ...
6
My system is:
Be transparent about the list of features that were declined and similarly be transparent about the list of features that were completed.
I am very careful when declining any items that have a lot of community support (which I measure with a wish count)
Its always better for the community to decline a feature request, which on my system is ...
6
If you need one-time help for a small coding project, sites such as elance work fine. Their main problem is that there is no committment on the part of the developer. On the contrary, in order for developers to make a living on such sites, they need to move on as quickly as possible to the next cheap gig.
Personally, I believe in motivating people with some ...
6
You claim to offer many services, but clearly you don't really have expertise or access to all of those services.
Maybe it would be best to decide which of those pieces -- design, dev, marketing -- you have something special to offer. For example, reselling consulting hours from developers you're unable to vet isn't a business, whereas a new way to market ...
6
I wouldn't completely agree that open-sourcing stops you generating product revenue, as you could dual-license your product - say GPL and commercial, that way people can get to it who might never had paid for it anyway, but for firms that need to buy a formally supported product there is always the commercial offering. See this article by Michael Widenius, ...
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