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Software Prototypes into Finished Products?
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?"
Before you ask for help, I think you will be spending some wise money by consulting a lawyer first, then a lawyer after you find someone to help you, then a lawyer once the project is done. Your idea can be extremely valueable with someone with more money ane assests.
Useless sig.
Consulting outfits are in business to take your money; completing your project comes second to billing.
The only way to handle consultants is to have your own very knowledgeable and forceful project manager to drive the consultants. This person needs to know enough about coding so that they cannot be BSed, or needs to have a trusted resource that will keep an eye on things.
I've yet to hear of even a single offshore success story; all of the ones I've heard end with "we were already way past the deadline, and we had to start rewriting from scratch!". Managing a project in your own office is very difficult. Managing one half-way around the globe staffed by people with different language and culture... forget it.
Good luck!
Why would you want to (essentially) outsource development of your idea? You may not be the greatest coder in the world, but you should be able to put together something by yourself. If it's a large enough project that it might take 2-3 additional people plus you a number of months to complete, then start your company, find those people, sell them on the idea, and get them to come work for you in a startup capacity - reduced or no salary, stock or option grants, etc. in return for shared responsibility in creating the company.
Face it - a consultant or contractor is only obligated to give you what you've contracted for, and is probably going to be more than happy to eat up your cash reserves by working extra hours to fix bugs, meet demo deadlines, etc. His/her reward is relatively small, and effort is commensurate. Someone sharing responsibility with you for putting out the product will be a lot more motivated (by a greater reward, and a greater risk) to provide whatever effort is needed to get the product out and get money rolling in ASAP - presumably your desire as well.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
He's asking how to build a team before there's a product to ship. I think you'll find that most projects on Sourceforge are one-man-bands, at least until they ship useful code. Generally, an open source project doesn't get volunteers until someone's using the code and offers to help in order to add some feature they want (or just adds it and shares the patch with the original developer/s).
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'm fairly pleased with XP myself.
But....
As a customer, I wouldn't hire a firm/team based on their methodology talk, whether they're talking XP or RUP or whatever. I'd hire them based on their demonstrated ability to get useful software out the door, then hope they keep doing whatever they'be been doing.
That said, as a customer I'd want frequent delivery of working code, regardless of the specific process the team will be using to delivery it.