| I run a one-man dev agency that staffs up a team to help non-technical execs build their v1. Here are some learnings: 1. There are three common dev team models: in-house, individual freelancers who eat what they kill, or agency (where you're sold by a principle and then juniors do the work). I recommend to all my prospects that if they can find a trusted lead dev, they should go that route - it's more economical for them and when I roll off a gig I set my clients up with the senior dev that built their app. Next best is eat what they kill freelancers - more expensive, but faster and incentives are pretty aligned. I would recommend NOT working with a fully staffed agency - they make money by having juniors do the work and incentives are often not aligned - they have staff on the bench they need to feed work to, so their incentive is to keep running the project until the client is out of money. 2. I just wrapped an MVP build in logistics for a European client. There are lots of devs who want to work on interesting technical problems, and for whom the industry doesn't matter. I hired two devs to build the MVP and both were keen on the gig. That said, it's hard to attract and evaluate good talent without at least one of those folks in house, which is what I do when I staff up a dev team to build my client's MVP. 3. Transitioning from third party to in-house - I'd pick the key pieces that are isolated from a business process perspective from the rest of your existing tool, spec them out with wireframes (https://www.reemer.com/consulting/roadmap), and build those. One of the biggest failure modes with building software in general is not enough definition of what "done" looks like when it's cheap to iterate and change (i.e. before code has been written). It's painful to write a long spec and wireframes (I've been doing it for 20 years) but once you've fleshed our your v1 and agreed on ~95% of what the final product looks like, it's generally pretty straight line to writing the code and shipping the product. 4. Re: quagmires - you need someone wearing the product management and engineering manager hats. Product will ensure the app's functional and technical requirements are clear, and an engineering manager will ensure your dev team doesn't get stuck spinning its wheels. In early-stage projects one person often wears multiple hats. Later on you can scale it up to an individual PM and Eng Manager in addition to your devs, if necessary. Happy to chat more if you like - no sales pitch... just drop me a line a k@reemer.com. |