{"id":32033,"date":"2013-10-15T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mixergy.com\/?p=32033"},"modified":"2016-06-24T17:57:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T00:57:30","slug":"course-cheat-sheet-hiring-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixergy.com\/course-cheat-sheet-hiring-developers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to develop software even if you’re not a developer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Ovens had a great software idea. He even had customers willing to pay for it, and it wasn\u2019t even built yet.<\/p>\n

There was just one problem: Sam isn\u2019t a developer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly couldn’t build a website that would say, ‘Hi, my name is Sam’ or install WordPress on a server,\u201d says Sam, founder of property inspection software SnapInspect<\/a>. \u201cI don’t even know a single HTML tag, even today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Sam couldn\u2019t build SnapInspect himself, he had to hire and oversee a team of developers. That\u2019s easier said than done when you don\u2019t speak code, but Sam found a solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to hire a team of developers that [built] SnapInspect up to what it is today,\u201d says Sam. \u201cDespite not knowing code, I was still able to work with [developers].\u201d Today SnapInspect has 1,500 customers and $37,000 per month in recurring revenue.<\/p>\n

In his Mixergy course<\/a>, Sam teaches non-developers how to hire developers. Here are three highlights from the course.<\/p>\n

1. Bring Your Vision to Life<\/h2>\n

\"\"You have to know your product inside and out before you can clearly explain it to developers. But that\u2019s hard to do when you aren\u2019t a developer yourself.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’ve got to know every screen and you’ve got to know what happens when you click this, what happens when you click that,\u201d says Sam, \u201cand it’s too much detail to have in your head.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Sam tried drawing it on paper, but there were \u201ctoo many arrows for me to understand my product fully, and what it was going to look like, and what the development would involve,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

So how do you communicate your vision?<\/p>\n

Make an interactive mock-up<\/em><\/h3>\n

Create a clickable PDF.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just built every screen of my software in Keynote,\u201d says Sam. \u201cSo they’re essentially invisible hyperlinks that link to slide numbers…I would openly say anybody could
\nbuild one of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, the clickable PDF saved him money. \u201cI told the developers to not do any design and don’t charge me for any design, just to grab those Keynote elements and use them as the UI design file,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

2. Don\u2019t Buy a Money Pit<\/h2>\n

\"\"When you\u2019re on a tight budget, hiring a freelance developer seems like an economical solution. But costs can quickly skyrocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith hourly rates, which is how most Elance people work, the budgets can blow out completely,\u201d says Sam. \u201cThey can be three times what they initially think they might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another problem is that freelancers can disappear. Sam knew one entrepreneur whose developer who would disappear for weeks at a time and always had a new excuse. \u201cEventually he said he got hit by a car and was in hospital,\u201d he says. \u201c[The entrepreneur] had to end up completely switching developers, she was thousands out of pocket and the main thing was…about three months got wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what should you do instead?<\/p>\n

Use a team of professionals<\/em><\/h3>\n

Hire a company to develop your software.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re dealing with a company, a lot of the time they’ll scope out the project,\u201d says Sam. \u201cThey’ll go through every feature. They’ll make sure that they understand everything, and then they’ll give you a fixed price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam felt a lot safer with a fixed price, and he liked knowing that there was a whole team working on SnapInspect. \u201cThey’ve got a physical office, they’ve got multiple employees, they’re not just going to disappear,\u201d says Sam. \u201cIf one person gets injured or sick, the whole project isn’t going to collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Know What They\u2019re Working On<\/h2>\n

\"\"Even when you hire a whole team of developers, you can\u2019t kick back and wait for your beautiful product to arrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you work with different people and you’re paying for them, you always want to know that they’re doing some work, especially when they’re remote or you’re in a different country,\u201d says Sam. \u201cYou really want to know that the actual work is being done.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how do you make sure the project is on track?<\/p>\n

Create interactive task lists<\/em><\/h3>\n

Set expectations and keep tabs as people progress.<\/p>\n

To do that, Sam and each of the people he hires agree on a reasonable amount of work for the week. Then he creates a board for each person in Trello. \u201cI use three little columns, one that says to-do, doing, and done,\u201d he says. As they finish a task, they mark it \u201cdone.\u201d<\/p>\n

That way, Sam always knows what someone is working on. \u201cI can see in real-time what’s going on,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I check at any point in the day, I can see what they’re currently working on, and at the end of the week, that to-do should be ended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by April Dykman.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Ovens had a great software idea. He even had customers willing to pay for it, and it wasn\u2019t even built yet.<\/p>\n

There was just one problem: Sam isn\u2019t a developer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[293,295,245],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheat-sheet","category-course-cheat-sheet","category-courses"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to develop software even if you're not a developer - Business Podcast for Startups<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sam Ovens had a great software idea. He even had customers willing to pay for it, and it wasn\u2019t even built yet. 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