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Finding a Ready-Made Dev Team?
marshrew writes "We are a small startup just coming out of a period of R&D with IP and prototype code (containing open source, commercial & freelancer-built custom components) developed/integrated in-house by essentially one guy. We're at the point where we want to build out first commercial implementation which will require a handful of developers for at least six months. We really don't have time or funds to go through a developer recruiting cycle, create a practice, get the team "gelled" etc. What we'd really like to do is find a small pre-existing team which which we could form a relationship to get our product out the door and possibly continue working with. We don't mean a splinter group from a larger dev house, but an agile, self-contained team, who enjoy working together and have an existing practice. Geography is not a problem as we are used to working in a distributed manner." Does such an animal exist? What have other teams done in a situation like this?
That's who we used in 2001 when we needed a huge web-based Java system done. They brought in nine programmers with a top-notch project manager. It cost a lot, but it cost less than not doing it.
It's called "The Internet"...
1. release source
2. internet builds product
3. exploit generosity
4. ???
5. profit (maybe?)
Try www.rentacoder.com , or other such sites. Although most people on the site are private individuals, there are some organizations with dozens of programmers, that can be hired for any period of time or to accomplish any set goal. Plus there is the benefit of user feedback from others who have hired the same team in the past. You can browse the list of teams with the highest user feedback, and invite them to bid on your project.
Sourceforge? www.sourceforge.net
When a company shuts down or lays off a bunch of developers, whole teams become available. I've seen hiring 'feeding frenzies' resulting from this, you're not unique in wanting to hire teams. Sometimes a team is hired as salaried staff, sometimes a team leader gets asked if he can get a team together for a contract (ie "form your own company, and we've got a job for you").
Either way, its rich pickings and unfortunately not that hard to find.
in Cambridge, UK. I worked with them once. They are like a small Logica.
Or S3 (Silicon Software Solutions) in Dublin, Ireland. I used to work for them.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
These were some guys who worked with my company in Massachussetts. They're pretty Java-focussed, I think, but they're good. They formed their group to do exactly what you're asking for. They were composed of three or four guys at the time.
http://team345.com/
there is a bunch of small software companies earning a living working for larger non-software companies. and the teams those companies have would be a lot happier if they got to work with novel technologies or simply for someone newer. as a matter of fact I'm from one of those companies, size 6 people. dimaqq@gmail.com
I had one such practice a few years back. However, in 2001-2003 there were fewer people looking for this kind of service. People were generally unwilling to take risks, and nothing much was happening in terms of application development. Atleast nothing like whats happening now, or back in '99.
Although many websites (like rentacoder.com) offer this functionality, it is difficult to guarantee the quality of people you will end up working with. The surprising limitation of these sites is that they have no mechanism to ensure quality of bidders or participants. Which is exactly why Arzoo.com (by the hotmail founder) failed. Bad quality. Add to that, people simply trying to outbid others. I have even seen $100 for a 1 month job!!! If you go to such sites, you are very likely to lose some time trying to filter out the not-so-good ones.
Since you will be working with people you know little about, there are however things that you could do, before making your final decision.
1. See if they have blogs. Look at their attitude, language, code quality, passion, whatever...
2. Talk to them. Check for conversational skills. These are very important!
3. See if they have done any open source work. (That will be a real bonus!)
4. Ask them to send source code.
I feel such a practice certainly has a place in modern IT. Agile, Quality-Concious and Inexpensive.
Things are looking up again, and thats good news.
Good luck to you.
Life is just a conviction.
Okay, so this is a blatant plug and not unbiased advice. Mod me down if you must... but it is in direct answer to the question. I'm posting anonymously so that my karma isn't being used as a marketting tool. ;-)