Everyone can manage the project?
Good day.
In this article I want to talk about the project, on which I have been working for a year, to share the experience gained in its implementation, as well as to receive critical feedback, advice and recommendations from the habro-community.
The project is called bukabench - a resource that is designed to provide the ability to quickly and easily search, select and purchase the right books. The topic is not new, but I wanted to do everything conscientiously, because I didn’t find anything suitable for myself at that time. It should be said that after we spent the first money to create the site (we are working on the project together with a friend), our developers showed us bookmix.ru, which almost completely possessed the same functionality that we had planned. It was the first shock, the first mistake and the first lesson made: always carefully analyze the market and competitors before launching the project. Banal lesson, is not it? But by that time the technical project was written and approved, the money was spent, and the desire to create something new was high.
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Our overall experience in managing IT projects was reduced to writing terms of reference to refine and change the management system of the company in which I was working at that time, and half a year later I left (my friend still works, providing financial support for our project). But both of us were active users of the network and, in our opinion, had a taste and possessed all the qualities to create a really cool book service. So we decided to take a chance, put points on our financial careers and make something worthwhile.
A year later, we realized that these qualities were not enough and we did not have enough skills in management, namely in project management. The website is developed by guys from Perspektiva and Planeta-Web. This is the same company, but according to them, dividing it into two brands and two sites, you can increase the number of customers. The advantages of working with them turned out to be relatively low prices (for us this was critical) and the solution of all the tasks put forward by us. The disadvantages include the inability to offer complete ready-made solutions (we constantly had to double-check the tasks facing them and refine them several times) and, like us, they had problems with project management, which resulted in unsatisfactory work with clients. This was the reason for the repeated postponement of completion and poor communication: it was difficult to get through and communicate normally. But nevertheless they coped with their work, showed themselves to be trustworthy specialists (this is important in this business) and we hope that they will still be able to improve their work and become our full-fledged and reliable partners.
Our main mistake for all the work was the desire to take into account all the details and to release a full-fledged, 100% ready product. This greatly delayed the overall implementation timeline, as it was necessary to rush from one little thing (important stuff) to another (no less important), distracting developers from performing tasks related to the main functionality. The second mistake and the second lesson: try to quickly release ready-made versions of the product, complementing it with new features with each new version. It's also pretty trite, but even after the error was realized, it was very difficult to carry out “work on the bugs” and think about the order of release of the versions, so that the result would be a single seamless product. Try it and you, it is much more difficult than it seems at first glance and is a good lesson in project planning and management.
Here is a list of what we have done during this time. We managed to create a decent design - the heart of our product - which allows us to solve the main tasks facing our resource, namely to provide the ability to quickly and easily search, select and purchase the right books. A program has been written for importing books from the OZON.ru database and, to date, over 110 thousand of them have been added to more than 6.5 thousand of authors and 450 publishing houses. Made a module to add prices to online stores. Also implemented a module for placing book reviews and on the way a module on quotes. Until now, much is in limbo. From the main this is the issuance of personal recommendations (the algorithm is ready, it remains to be done programmatically) and numerous edits to the design and general work of the site.
Finally, I want to say that, despite all our misfortunes and dissatisfaction (I console myself only with the fact that many “business gurus” attribute this quality to real leaders) with the achieved results and the current state of things, it still turned out to be very cool to go beyond the limits of everyday life around you , take a chance, believe in yourself and follow the call of the heart, which according to Stevie Jobs “knows where it wants to be.” From this you can learn the third and final lesson: believe in an idea that you really care about and don’t be afraid to follow it. Life is short and a second chance may no longer be presented.
And in the end I want to ask experienced visitors of Habr to comment on the question, which is important for many novice managers: how to achieve fast and successful launch of a new product with limited resources? For comparison, you can take TeamLab - a platform for collaboration and project management, which in the year of its existence attracted about 100 thousand users from almost 200 countries of the world. Such an example was not taken by chance, since with this resource we have a birthday on one day, but the results of the work are different. It would be interesting to hear their comments on this question.
Good luck in the implementation of their own projects.
In this article I want to talk about the project, on which I have been working for a year, to share the experience gained in its implementation, as well as to receive critical feedback, advice and recommendations from the habro-community.
The project is called bukabench - a resource that is designed to provide the ability to quickly and easily search, select and purchase the right books. The topic is not new, but I wanted to do everything conscientiously, because I didn’t find anything suitable for myself at that time. It should be said that after we spent the first money to create the site (we are working on the project together with a friend), our developers showed us bookmix.ru, which almost completely possessed the same functionality that we had planned. It was the first shock, the first mistake and the first lesson made: always carefully analyze the market and competitors before launching the project. Banal lesson, is not it? But by that time the technical project was written and approved, the money was spent, and the desire to create something new was high.
')
Our overall experience in managing IT projects was reduced to writing terms of reference to refine and change the management system of the company in which I was working at that time, and half a year later I left (my friend still works, providing financial support for our project). But both of us were active users of the network and, in our opinion, had a taste and possessed all the qualities to create a really cool book service. So we decided to take a chance, put points on our financial careers and make something worthwhile.
A year later, we realized that these qualities were not enough and we did not have enough skills in management, namely in project management. The website is developed by guys from Perspektiva and Planeta-Web. This is the same company, but according to them, dividing it into two brands and two sites, you can increase the number of customers. The advantages of working with them turned out to be relatively low prices (for us this was critical) and the solution of all the tasks put forward by us. The disadvantages include the inability to offer complete ready-made solutions (we constantly had to double-check the tasks facing them and refine them several times) and, like us, they had problems with project management, which resulted in unsatisfactory work with clients. This was the reason for the repeated postponement of completion and poor communication: it was difficult to get through and communicate normally. But nevertheless they coped with their work, showed themselves to be trustworthy specialists (this is important in this business) and we hope that they will still be able to improve their work and become our full-fledged and reliable partners.
Our main mistake for all the work was the desire to take into account all the details and to release a full-fledged, 100% ready product. This greatly delayed the overall implementation timeline, as it was necessary to rush from one little thing (important stuff) to another (no less important), distracting developers from performing tasks related to the main functionality. The second mistake and the second lesson: try to quickly release ready-made versions of the product, complementing it with new features with each new version. It's also pretty trite, but even after the error was realized, it was very difficult to carry out “work on the bugs” and think about the order of release of the versions, so that the result would be a single seamless product. Try it and you, it is much more difficult than it seems at first glance and is a good lesson in project planning and management.
Here is a list of what we have done during this time. We managed to create a decent design - the heart of our product - which allows us to solve the main tasks facing our resource, namely to provide the ability to quickly and easily search, select and purchase the right books. A program has been written for importing books from the OZON.ru database and, to date, over 110 thousand of them have been added to more than 6.5 thousand of authors and 450 publishing houses. Made a module to add prices to online stores. Also implemented a module for placing book reviews and on the way a module on quotes. Until now, much is in limbo. From the main this is the issuance of personal recommendations (the algorithm is ready, it remains to be done programmatically) and numerous edits to the design and general work of the site.
Finally, I want to say that, despite all our misfortunes and dissatisfaction (I console myself only with the fact that many “business gurus” attribute this quality to real leaders) with the achieved results and the current state of things, it still turned out to be very cool to go beyond the limits of everyday life around you , take a chance, believe in yourself and follow the call of the heart, which according to Stevie Jobs “knows where it wants to be.” From this you can learn the third and final lesson: believe in an idea that you really care about and don’t be afraid to follow it. Life is short and a second chance may no longer be presented.
And in the end I want to ask experienced visitors of Habr to comment on the question, which is important for many novice managers: how to achieve fast and successful launch of a new product with limited resources? For comparison, you can take TeamLab - a platform for collaboration and project management, which in the year of its existence attracted about 100 thousand users from almost 200 countries of the world. Such an example was not taken by chance, since with this resource we have a birthday on one day, but the results of the work are different. It would be interesting to hear their comments on this question.
Good luck in the implementation of their own projects.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/125104/
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