You have an idea, but have no idea where to start? Here it says how you can help your developer with building up an estimate for your project.
There are thousands of emotions people experience having a great idea stuck in the head, another thousand bothers you while trying to evaluate the cost for bringing it up to life. What has to be done, to design the project right, to develop it, to sell it, to support it, to turn it into something meaningful and successful, to become respectful and trustworthy? The average person, regardless having a dedicated experience or not, regardless having a trusted partner or not, can evaluate every of the listed above steps with the appropriate dedication and if feels motivated to do it. But, which of those steps is the most difficult and complex to comprehend on your own?
It does not matter much who you are, either a developer, marketing guru or whether you are saving lives in the hospital every day – the technology world is always moving round, and even the most tech-savvy persons feel it quite hard to keep up with it. We in Skynix had experienced the situation sometimes when the technical specialists from the biggest companies were not able to provide enough insights about their own software, so they were not able to help us effectively enough 🙂
That is why we think about a good way to start something is to utilise everything from the collective knowledge, but not trying to figure out everything on your own.
Choosing your techonlogy partner is comlicated, and this is a decision that should be treated like a lifetime decision. But consider you are able to test-drive your future partner before starting a full-scale engagement… And yes, you are! The most correct way to do this would be letting your candidates help you go through the stages of designing/specifying and development.
The Big Picture
First of all, don’t be aftaid to explain the whole picture. You may think this is not needed, or it’s too stressfull to be put right from the beginning, or would lead to the extremely high quote. Tell your developer how do you envision your service or a website in 3, in 5 or even in 10 years. (yes, exactly the same way, how it is being asked on the job interviews). Go ask them to sign an NDA, if it feels more comfortable for you. Let them understand and get closer to the technical design and the architecture, let them make it scalable for your exact case. Maybe right now you don’t need any complicated server architecture or a set of modern tech, but you may very likely need it in the near future. Your developer will be able to help you in making a thoughtful and meaningful decision, you will be sure you will not have to relaunch everything from scratch in say 2 years.
Or vice versa, why would you be spending all of your money on all that fancy tech and crazy architectures if all you actually need is just a social support solution for your main business? If you are a restaurant owner or an educational establishment owner, or an event management agency owner you do not neer to worry about the over-the-ocean traffic, right?
User Story
Many people approach us trying to explain what do they want for the solution to be capable of and which technologies do they prefer. It is a very valuable information and we need it as much as possible, yet the trouble is that it brings up certain limitations to use the more cost-effective and maintainable options and approaches. We very often ask our clients, “Why do you think this is the best way?” – and it only strengthens their worries.
Our average client puts a lot of efforts trying to become a developer and explaining the details, thinking it helps the product features to become more understandable for a technical-minded person. We appreciate it of course, however it means that in most cases the most important point is getting lost, as it is not thought through the user experience perspective.
Instead of doing so, we recommend to put yourself into you audience’ shoes, basically go try yourself as if you are the end user of your solution. In the end, this is the reason why are we willing to creae our product – it has to be useful for your client. Try to visualise your journey from the beginning to the end by the user’s eyes and tell us about each step he/she has to take. On our end we will do everything possible to pick it up from there.
Prioritization
As soon as all said above is done it is time to set up the priorities. Depending on the scale and the budget of the Client it is possible to choose one of three options for any startup project development. Knowing what refers to you, actually is the first prioritization step.
- Prototype or POC (Proof of Concept)
- MVP – minimal viable product
- Complete solution
Prototyping is inevitable if you need to gain more funding and to attract investors with the minimal own investments. This is probably the quickest and the cheapest way to prove yourself and your potential investors that the product is technically viable and has got a potential visualization.
MVP – is a product already with a minimal set of functional abilities to run the product lifecycle. MVP – is something you can not only show to your investors or to the targeted market, but what you can allow to be used and to be benefited of, which potentially can attract natural self-financing for future product improvements.
Complete solution, which is most commongly related to e-commerce, showcases the fully-functional solution, having either all required or most of the required functionalities for the full-scale online business.
Everything stated above – is basically all you need to provide to the thoroughly shortlisted potential development partners, to get an adequate preliminary quote and timeline.
Sometime later we will try explaining what are you going to get in response.
