Internet startup risk management. Part one
Written from personal experience and impressions. This is not complete material, rather a slight squeeze.
Please note that you liked, write comments and questions in lichku.
Risks
Universal methods
In order to determine as accurately as possible whether the project will be of interest to a specific group of people who will pay or click on banners, it is enough to conduct a little research.
First, as accurately as possible to determine the target audience. As a rule, these are one or several groups of people who are distinguished by a certain age, gender, geography of residence, social status, cultural characteristics, legal details and, most importantly, an area of ​​interest.
To understand that the definition of a target audience is unsuccessful is very simple - when it contains the word “all.”
Seeing a successful definition of the target audience is also not difficult - as a rule, it contains specific data, and it contains very detailed descriptions of several groups.
Good material on this subject can be found in the books of Philip Kotler.
Once the target audience is defined, the next super interesting task becomes. Find these people. We live in a century of highly developed social networks, therefore, to find community forums by interests will not be a problem.
Please also note that real groups that meet your specific requirements may not be found in thematic communities. The conclusion about the size of one of the groups of people who are interested in your project can be made by evaluating projects that are possibly distant by subject, but coinciding in the target audience.
Having counted the number of participants in the groups that you actually found, you can get an idea about the projected size of the future audience of your project.
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It is revealed through interviews among representatives of Central Asia. Details are below.
A simple way to insure against this error is to collect a sufficient amount of information, study opinions, interview key participants. Take into account the opinions received! Not only listen to yourself, but also critics. It is not necessary to accept their position, but it is in your interest to listen and record the information.
And here, and further on the material, one of the fundamental principles is the principle popularized by Suvorov "It is hard to learn, it is easy to fight."
Well, or a raven from the cartoon “Wings, Legs and Tails” - “It’s better to lose a day, then fly in five minutes”.
I understand that laziness. I understand that scrap. I understand that sometimes difficult. But in fact observing numerous startups - then it will be even more difficult. And even lazier. And with a huge degree of probability - “it's too late.”
“We are 3 million,” and at the same time there are no more than three to five hundred active participants on the site who use and pay money. A frequent case, familiar to many of the readers.
Over the loyalty of the audience should work as a separate project. To help - the means of "socialization", gentleman's recruitment, the creation of groups in social networks and themes in close forums, certainly a few strong copywriters or involved participants.
The important point is a convenient feedback. The start-up should often take the initiative and ask participants about the service, how they use it.
Contests, meetings and entertainment, partisan work on the development of social groups contribute to increasing loyalty. You can also simply upload photos from meetings and events. Works, checked.
It makes sense to make friends with the most active participants, and regularly consult with them. Ask them why they pay money? What you hear is likely to be far from the goals that you considered and worked through at the planning stage of the project, but will be an excellent material for further development.
The most popular diagnosis. Surprisingly, adults and very serious people invest start-ups with money and their own time, without devoting enough attention to the business model.
There are literally thousands of cases when the Internet project is promoted, the audience is, but there is no money.
What is a business model? This is literally the method by which a project gets paid. Often called the term "Monetization." When developing a business model, the data obtained from a marketing research, taking into account the conversion, can be used to calculate profits.
There should be answers to two questions: “how” and “how much”. Moreover, the profit plan may be relative, but must be calendar.
In general, business models are successful:
- calculated;
- popular, or correlated with popular methods of "monetization".
Calculate is very simple. In the spreadsheets, calculate the amount of net money received from one satisfied client, multiply by the predicted number of visitors (do not take a conversion in excess of 1%, oh, not worth ...), and calculate the calendar schedule. What is the expected revenue per month, quarter, year?
It makes sense to prefer traditional schemes:
- subscription fee;
- direct revenue from sales of goods / services;
- freemium;
- sale of advertising;
- other.
Complex schemes work when they are embedded in an already working project, in the process of optimizing the basic business model. I do not know a single Internet project that could survive with a complex monetization scheme from the start. I know dozens of projects with sophisticated schemes that have not paid for hosting.
First, give priority to prototyping. Details are below.
Secondly, before the actual planning of the development, get opinions on the schedule from several outsourcers. Multiply the time and cost obtained by two times — it’s better to act with a margin than to detect problems after they have occurred.
People's omen - all really successful startups in the development remained no more than three months. Let's not discuss the reasons, this is just a sign.
Thirdly, it makes sense to make a calendar schedule with periods of not more than a month, and monitor its implementation. If time has passed for two periods, but there is still no release - obviously, it makes sense to drastically change something in the development.
Highly detailed technical specifications, which is surprising, are not a panacea in this case. Very often there are seemingly solid documents described in which programs do not work. The descriptions are simply not self-sufficient, but replete with references to techniques and banal aspects.
Make a concise description of the business logic, and describe the most important aspects of the interface. Do not draw forms, and schemes with dozens of arrows, if you are not an experienced developer. It will be a waste of time.
Get technical advice not from one but from several professionals. Moreover, the degree of professionalism of the interviewee should be assessed by studying the reviews and reputation in the thematic communities, and not just the opinions of relatives and friends who are far from the topic.
If you consider yourself to be passed through, use the advice of one of the ancient thinkers, I do not remember who said this: "Doubt!" Simply discuss the technical aspects of implementation with colleagues who are smarter than you. Even if it is difficult to recognize - find those, and talk. As a rule, most professionals are open to contacts, and do not shy away from advising colleagues in private. All forums have lichka.
Many startups are looking for investments only in order to master them. The actual fate of the startup while on the side. Identify such possible as a result of the interview, some of the following questions:
- they are ready to sell the idea and project at any stages;
- they easily move the project budget under the investor’s abilities;
- they are not ready to sign investment agreements, share personal data and so on.
Of course, the list of questions is not complete, and people change, and change their opinion and position - this is completely normal.
But determination of positions and some diagnostics will completely help to get rid of the development of events where you find yourself alone with the “broken trough”.
The smaller the team, the better. Sometimes, it makes sense to buy the idea and the loyalty of its author for a small amount, and responsibly engage closely in sales as part of a small sabotage group - where the fighters fight shoulder to shoulder, and there is no fear that a comrade can fail.
Practice shows that it is hired employees who are the most loyal and involved. Surprisingly, but so.
If you reliably personally spend at least half of your time on the project - then it may fire.
If not, you’ll rather get into huge statistics of unsuccessful experiments, which are quite a lot in each freelancer's portfolio.
There is such a thing as “entry level”. Hundreds of thousands of microbudgetary startups praying for a dozen leaders, this very level of entry, have actually been raised.
There is a common opinion that the level of entry into the market in IT start-ups is not high. This is true if we talk about unsuccessful projects. They are crazy to much.
At least read diagonally the project management literature. Its a lot, and almost all the books are good.
It is advisable to learn from the mistakes of others, and not on their own. How do you think?
The taste and color of the comrades do not. The vast majority of inexperienced startups who perceive design projects, invest more money and attention in it than they should. At the same time rely on the experience of Steve.
Yes, Steve was very attentive to design. But he was operating with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and was engaged in the optimization of already running projects. Not experiments at an early stage, but less than 1% of the budget of promoted projects.
As a result, create designs in which a lot of "meat". Often they turn out to be difficult-to-wear, because designers obediently heed the customer and draw what they are asked for. Naturally, such layouts do not take into account the development of functionality, and most importantly, they tend to inspire only their authors. They are bright and colorful, so naturally distract users from what they should pay attention to. Of course, the result is predictable - the interfaces simply "do not work."
Another problem is an obsessive design that some like, and others just don't like.
It is easy to insure yourself - to minimize the work on design, focusing only on the main details (modular grid, palette, signs, style, asceticism), make a fully functional prototype, providing everything that should be foreseen, and give the designer a working program.
This strategy hides another phenomenon.
The fact is that designers, as creative individuals, are a people very suspicious and even touchy. The overwhelming majority of designers requests to remake something is perceived almost as a personal insult.
A simple way to help avoid problems with the design, and with the need to change the designer - to give him to design not schemes and sketches, but a working program. Inspiration will be on top, tested many times!
The IT industry is amazingly young. It is developing super dynamically, but in fact it is not even 30 years old in the world, 15 years in our country.
Trends in the IT industry are very short. Literally - 3-6 months. Compare with 3-5 years in advertising (industry about 80 years), 100 years in construction (oh old ...). Everything changes very quickly.
Themes quickly spread. During the week e-magpies on tails are distributed to all interested in every new idea. We often see this from the inside - when dozens of authors of the same “new” idea simultaneously start searching for resources and outsourcers for their “unique” project.
There is a popular fashion - to repeat famous western startups. In most cases, only super-popular projects that opened several years ago are in fashion. Thus, repeating them, the authors obviously find themselves in retrospect, falling out of the trend.
An affordable method for successful copying is to correlate the developed business model with modern trends. At the same time, I beg you to make sure that the trends you are considering are relevant. Habr will help!
The most serious problem is delaying time. From the idea to the opening often passes indecently a lot of time. This has a major impact on the success of the project from different angles. We will not list them, as there is a sufficient amount of excellent literature on these issues. I note only briefly that it is very bad.
One way to avoid this catastrophe is to plan the preparatory work for the opening of the project in such a way as to complete them within the average duration of the trend. Namely - no more than 3-6 months.
In the memory of the author and many of his colleagues dozens of projects, the work on which lasted more and much more. None of the projects without major changes was fired. Again, this sign ...
The most popular fear among startups! And, honestly, justified.
Burn the topic is easy and simple.
What is interesting, and insurance is not difficult.
1. Make development dynamic. Open a project and start working on it ... after you do it the first time, you will find that 70% of the actions were off topic.
2. Do you need investments or a project that brings profit? Honestly, these are different things. In search of investment is easy to lose the project.
3. Limit the circle of those involved. For information and feedback is not necessary to talk about the project. The project has details, and you can explore them separately.
The first commandment of the Japanese samurai "Do not tell anyone about your intentions." Think about it. Banzai!
Well clever after all! Such a great idea. Well done!
And what makes you think that he will also be able to successfully fulfill the role of director of a small enterprise?
If, pah-pah-pah, you will have to do the surgery yourself - will you trust the young man? With sparkling eyes and great ideas?
Even if you are the same young man, heed the mind! Hire a manager. Experienced, who reliably knows how to develop projects.
At least - the so-called mentor.
Secret: you should not look for a profile mentor. As a rule, they really don't give a damn about the results. I do not know why, just stating the results of observations.
Find a successful entrepreneur who has succeeded in various areas, possibly far from information technology. The fact is that the principles of successful business in all sectors are the same. And about IT, thanks to the popularity of the trend, a lot of amateurs and laymen have gathered. Even from the village of Skolkovo or the like. And most of them are difficult to determine ... An entrepreneur operating in more traditional areas will give you much more useful advice than a conditional average IT manager.
The author of the project will be an excellent consultant. But do not impose administrative work on him if he does not have relevant experience.
Why is it that in other industries everyone understands the absurdity of the opposite?
Speech on the development.
Let's compare with the auto industry. If successful decisions on the organization of production, when the base is the assembly line, to it - well-established logistics, ensuring the production of components.
If automakers from scratch were engaged in the production of steel, rolled sheets, development of electronics and other low-level tasks - we have not learned anything about these automakers. A successful strategy is to focus on the main aspects, and to implement them actively search for and select tested solutions.
In the analogy with programming, we are talking about the fact that the duration and cost of development can be significantly reduced:
In order to succeed - it is necessary to narrow the area under control. What do you want to develop? Your project, or their "your framework"? The last thing, believe me, is expensive and just pointless - there are available analogues, where thousands of man-hours have already been invested, which have huge groups where you can get support. No self-written framework can compete with, for example, the jQuery family of solutions, Adobe products, C ++ base libraries, YII, CodeIgniter, Drupal and hundreds of others.
On the thesis “our framework will help you” it makes sense to ask again - and to whom has it already helped? And evaluate not the design of sites, but the dynamics of the development of projects. This eliminates all amateur offers.
Before writing any modules, for example, acquiring, it has to look for existing ones. They can be used as is, or with refinement, or used as a basis for designing and developing a new solution.
Writing everything from scratch is even worse than “your own framework”. Guaranteed delays and "unpredictable", in fact, a spontaneous increase in the budget.
This may also include premature optimization. Experienced programmers are aware of the so-called principle of harm to premature optimization. Optimization is not meaningless when it is applied to an already running program. The main optimization method is to search for bottlenecks, for example, by the method of unit testing, and subsequent refinement, precisely according to the objectively found.
Many newbies begin to optimize even before they get something workable. In 100% of cases, this does not bring benefits - time is spent a lot, but they do not guess at the bottlenecks. It is nonsense to guess, instead of investigating and making decisions based on objective, real, and not imaginary information.
The following phenomenon is well known to experienced designers. Scrupulously worked out and balanced is easily spoiled by one or two wrong actions.
The best idea is easily spoiled by the so-called “bottlenecks”. As a rule, they are not noticeable at the design stage, and only after the fact are revealed.
In order to insure the project from failure, it makes sense to do the following.
1. To narrow the object area. Throw away all unnecessary, leaving only the most important details.
2. Run the design! In fact, the degree of elaboration is of secondary importance. The fact that the idea, strategy, tactics and details are stored not only in your imagination, but on paper, is initially important.
Imagine you want to build yourself a house. Will you work without a drawing? That's right - they would like some, but you will make both a drawing and an estimate.
It is completely incomprehensible why startups ignore design. It is not necessary for this to hire RBC consulting. Start with entries in a text editor or in evernote.
Make two documents: "Everything" and "Basic." Thus, you can capture all the ideas, improving the quality of further analysis, and separate the wheat from the chaff, choosing really important facts.
To understand whether the chosen aspect is important, simple. Make a “Master” document in a two-column table format. In the left write factors. In the right - what these factors affect. Objectively, and with an explanation of how it is affected. If the cell in the right column is empty, or written unconvincingly - this is a potential candidate for postponement.
Structure and simplify the action plan until it becomes amazingly simple, and you can put down the relative dates around each of the items - thus obtaining a schedule for the project.
Tracking the implementation of the schedule and will be your main goal for the near future.
Analytics is considered the lot of nerds.
Well and good! While your competitors are thinking about destinies and nerds - you will protect your money, effort and time by conducting a self-contained reconnaissance before the outbreak of hostilities.
Adequate analysis costs are easy to determine. They should be less than the costs of opening a project.
Tip one: write everything down. And draw. The logical (abstract) thinking of a person is arranged in such a way that it works very quickly, but is able to process only 3-7 facts at a time.
Writing and sketching even the obvious - you achieve two goals. First, you record the data for subsequent conclusions. Recorded - will not be forgotten. Secondly, you free your own abstract thinking for more useful than trivial thoughts.
The important point is that the recorded thoughts look more vividly than in fantasy and in words. It makes sense to record everything. By the way, all successful businessmen do just that. If you are too lazy to write - use a voice recorder.
Then you can re-read, and think again, making useful decisions. Your results will be brilliant.
For data collection, in addition to reading the Internet, it is also useful to conduct an interview.
You have a definite opinion on specific issues. Clear and convincing. But in order to reduce the number of errors - this opinion must be objective.
As Einstein proved, everything is subjective. Therefore, in order to reduce the number of errors, it makes sense to collect opinions. The decision to take anyway you, but! The more opinions taken into account, even frankly "wrong" - the more points of support for your decision. The more relevant and successful your decision is.
You can interview both colleagues and hypothetical users. To ensure relevance of results, include representatives of bright and medium representatives to be interviewed.
Use the well-known copywriting technology:
1. Make a brief. The more the better. Only upon completion of the work on the brief do not forget to highlight the most important aspects, and include them in the short version. Make two versions of the brief - short, and full, for those interested.
Questions in the brief must be open. There are a lot of recommendations on this subject in the literature for advertisers and marketers.
2. Get involved in the survey service.
3. Conduct personal interviews and conversations, independently and diligently impartially filling out the brief on the results. Mark all ideas and thoughts that you have not foreseen.
At the same time, the idea of ​​scorching is not necessary You can create impersonal polls, separating them and formulating questions in such a way as to study opinions, but not hint at the topic.
I will tell you a good way to ensure security from unauthorized dissemination of the idea - to pretend that you have another topic. Feel nonetheless, only parametrically similar to what interests you. Parameters and fix - in the amount you get a bright enough and self-sufficient picture.
Received information and use to revise the idea and its individual parameters.
Probnichek is significantly cheaper vial. The effect of probing is the same, but the risks are less.
The bottom line is that the prototype is fully functional. Choose the most important functions, think up an interface that is simple and understandable for a knowingly wide (that is, unprepared) audience, and implement it with a small budget. Run a mini-project, and carefully examine all its characteristics - from statistics to single sales. Sure - you need user feedback!
Interestingly, champion projects are born from prototypes. Often they even slightly change in the process of development. A striking example is Gmail.
After some results are obtained from the prototype, 3-6 months after launch, it makes sense to think about its development. But this time you will have already objective information about various aspects of the project. And your management decisions will be much better.
The beauty of the prototype is that it allows you to try out ideas and strategies not even in miniature, but with minimal investment. It makes no sense to share with someone and give large pieces of the future of the pie for the most modest participation at an early stage. In most cases, a minimum amount of investment is sufficient. Make a working version of the project with a minimum set of the most important ideas, and start to work.
More about prototyping:
Very conditional wording.
It is possible to assess the success of the project by performing one or several experiments in an abstract format. The purpose of the experiments can be:
- assessment of the volume of the target audience;
- assessment of the relevance of the interests of the target audience;
- careful assessment of the relevance of the startup idea.
This will help the copywriter, or you can make yourself. Talk to people on the topic, post articles and questions in communities and forums, and draw conclusions.
Before investing money, personal time and effort in a large project, it may be worthwhile to make a small, but distracted. Not the same, maybe not even on a similar topic, but working with the same target audience, with the same business model - you can try out completely different aspects, and the price of the experiments will be quite modest.
The results of the experiments can be used as input data in the analysis and design of the perspective of the main idea.
Bad feedback is one of the most valuable tools of a good director. Only a dissatisfied customer will quite sincerely tell you what, how and why he did not like it.
Internet projects have such a feature that its users are passive. They do not need to speak out loud, go somewhere or do something to use the provided. They can use it completely silently. And even if they don’t like something - they are completely cynical, they can simply ignore what is offered, or ignore the shortcomings, and you will never know about these problems.
Dissatisfied customers, on the contrary - do not stint on the details.
The specificity of this business is that weaknesses often create more problems than strong solutions - they promote a project in the front. Because of the “narrow necks” there is an outflow of visitors, reduced loyalty, problems in the implementation of interface scenarios and other troubles.
It is an angry, dissatisfied customer that will help you learn about these issues. Down with rose-colored glasses! Teach your technical support staff, do consulting and reviewing reviews yourself, take many effective measures, invest in getting feedback, whatever they might be. And analyze each.
Negative reviews are priceless. A dissatisfied customer can let you know how to get hundreds and thousands of satisfied people. This is not my discovery.
The most evil mistake of startups is deafness. In successful entrepreneurs, the ears are usually open, and they invest money and develop projects to get user feedback.
In accordance with the Pareto principle, only a small part of the actions leads to the achievement of a potentially large part of the result. It works, it is physics, and it is a fact.
Make a table. In the first column, in detail, tezisno - all solutions, all functions, chips, gadgets, features of the interface and design of your project. In the second column write what each thesis affects.
Then, only then - in the third column, evaluate the degree of influence of the thesis on the result. Points must indicate relative importance, that is, how much a specific item is more important than a neighboring one. It is not necessary to philosophize, limit the scale of 5 or 10 points. Simplicity will play into your account, in this case.
Sort the table by the third column. In theory, only the first 20% are significant.
When planning, select them in a separate document. This is something without which the project will not be able to live and develop. These aspects should be given the most attention.
From the rest, select those items that directly or indirectly affect the involvement and loyalty of the audience, as well as those that inspire the authors or key users of the project. Buttons for sharing and login through social networks without forms for registration got there?
Form them with a “gentleman's” package - something that just should be.
In this way, you can identify useful concepts for the development of your project, and weed out an assumed one.
Write in a personal, what would you like to know in the next article.
Thank you for your attention and good luck!
Please note that you liked, write comments and questions in lichku.
Risks
- Misses in the area of ​​interest of the target audience
- Incorrect determination of the target audience
- Insufficient audience activity
- Unsuccessful business model
- Breaking deadlines in the development
- Non-involvement of project participants
- Projects with a budget of less than $ 1000
- Design
- Trend Fall
- Burn the subject
- The young man is pale, with eyes burning
- The invention of bicycles
Universal methods
- Strategy
- Analysis
- Interview
- Prototype
- Non-core prototyping
- Reviews
- Strong solutions
Risks
Misses in the area of ​​interest of the target audience
In order to determine as accurately as possible whether the project will be of interest to a specific group of people who will pay or click on banners, it is enough to conduct a little research.
First, as accurately as possible to determine the target audience. As a rule, these are one or several groups of people who are distinguished by a certain age, gender, geography of residence, social status, cultural characteristics, legal details and, most importantly, an area of ​​interest.
To understand that the definition of a target audience is unsuccessful is very simple - when it contains the word “all.”
Seeing a successful definition of the target audience is also not difficult - as a rule, it contains specific data, and it contains very detailed descriptions of several groups.
Good material on this subject can be found in the books of Philip Kotler.
Once the target audience is defined, the next super interesting task becomes. Find these people. We live in a century of highly developed social networks, therefore, to find community forums by interests will not be a problem.
Please also note that real groups that meet your specific requirements may not be found in thematic communities. The conclusion about the size of one of the groups of people who are interested in your project can be made by evaluating projects that are possibly distant by subject, but coinciding in the target audience.
Having counted the number of participants in the groups that you actually found, you can get an idea about the projected size of the future audience of your project.
')
Incorrect determination of the target audience
It is revealed through interviews among representatives of Central Asia. Details are below.
A simple way to insure against this error is to collect a sufficient amount of information, study opinions, interview key participants. Take into account the opinions received! Not only listen to yourself, but also critics. It is not necessary to accept their position, but it is in your interest to listen and record the information.
And here, and further on the material, one of the fundamental principles is the principle popularized by Suvorov "It is hard to learn, it is easy to fight."
Well, or a raven from the cartoon “Wings, Legs and Tails” - “It’s better to lose a day, then fly in five minutes”.
I understand that laziness. I understand that scrap. I understand that sometimes difficult. But in fact observing numerous startups - then it will be even more difficult. And even lazier. And with a huge degree of probability - “it's too late.”
Insufficient audience activity
“We are 3 million,” and at the same time there are no more than three to five hundred active participants on the site who use and pay money. A frequent case, familiar to many of the readers.
Over the loyalty of the audience should work as a separate project. To help - the means of "socialization", gentleman's recruitment, the creation of groups in social networks and themes in close forums, certainly a few strong copywriters or involved participants.
The important point is a convenient feedback. The start-up should often take the initiative and ask participants about the service, how they use it.
Contests, meetings and entertainment, partisan work on the development of social groups contribute to increasing loyalty. You can also simply upload photos from meetings and events. Works, checked.
It makes sense to make friends with the most active participants, and regularly consult with them. Ask them why they pay money? What you hear is likely to be far from the goals that you considered and worked through at the planning stage of the project, but will be an excellent material for further development.
Unsuccessful business model
The most popular diagnosis. Surprisingly, adults and very serious people invest start-ups with money and their own time, without devoting enough attention to the business model.
There are literally thousands of cases when the Internet project is promoted, the audience is, but there is no money.
What is a business model? This is literally the method by which a project gets paid. Often called the term "Monetization." When developing a business model, the data obtained from a marketing research, taking into account the conversion, can be used to calculate profits.
There should be answers to two questions: “how” and “how much”. Moreover, the profit plan may be relative, but must be calendar.
In general, business models are successful:
- calculated;
- popular, or correlated with popular methods of "monetization".
Calculate is very simple. In the spreadsheets, calculate the amount of net money received from one satisfied client, multiply by the predicted number of visitors (do not take a conversion in excess of 1%, oh, not worth ...), and calculate the calendar schedule. What is the expected revenue per month, quarter, year?
It makes sense to prefer traditional schemes:
- subscription fee;
- direct revenue from sales of goods / services;
- freemium;
- sale of advertising;
- other.
Complex schemes work when they are embedded in an already working project, in the process of optimizing the basic business model. I do not know a single Internet project that could survive with a complex monetization scheme from the start. I know dozens of projects with sophisticated schemes that have not paid for hosting.
Breaking deadlines in the development
First, give priority to prototyping. Details are below.
Secondly, before the actual planning of the development, get opinions on the schedule from several outsourcers. Multiply the time and cost obtained by two times — it’s better to act with a margin than to detect problems after they have occurred.
People's omen - all really successful startups in the development remained no more than three months. Let's not discuss the reasons, this is just a sign.
Thirdly, it makes sense to make a calendar schedule with periods of not more than a month, and monitor its implementation. If time has passed for two periods, but there is still no release - obviously, it makes sense to drastically change something in the development.
Highly detailed technical specifications, which is surprising, are not a panacea in this case. Very often there are seemingly solid documents described in which programs do not work. The descriptions are simply not self-sufficient, but replete with references to techniques and banal aspects.
Make a concise description of the business logic, and describe the most important aspects of the interface. Do not draw forms, and schemes with dozens of arrows, if you are not an experienced developer. It will be a waste of time.
Get technical advice not from one but from several professionals. Moreover, the degree of professionalism of the interviewee should be assessed by studying the reviews and reputation in the thematic communities, and not just the opinions of relatives and friends who are far from the topic.
If you consider yourself to be passed through, use the advice of one of the ancient thinkers, I do not remember who said this: "Doubt!" Simply discuss the technical aspects of implementation with colleagues who are smarter than you. Even if it is difficult to recognize - find those, and talk. As a rule, most professionals are open to contacts, and do not shy away from advising colleagues in private. All forums have lichka.
Non-involvement of project participants
Many startups are looking for investments only in order to master them. The actual fate of the startup while on the side. Identify such possible as a result of the interview, some of the following questions:
- they are ready to sell the idea and project at any stages;
- they easily move the project budget under the investor’s abilities;
- they are not ready to sign investment agreements, share personal data and so on.
Of course, the list of questions is not complete, and people change, and change their opinion and position - this is completely normal.
But determination of positions and some diagnostics will completely help to get rid of the development of events where you find yourself alone with the “broken trough”.
The smaller the team, the better. Sometimes, it makes sense to buy the idea and the loyalty of its author for a small amount, and responsibly engage closely in sales as part of a small sabotage group - where the fighters fight shoulder to shoulder, and there is no fear that a comrade can fail.
Practice shows that it is hired employees who are the most loyal and involved. Surprisingly, but so.
Projects with a budget of less than $ 1000
If you reliably personally spend at least half of your time on the project - then it may fire.
If not, you’ll rather get into huge statistics of unsuccessful experiments, which are quite a lot in each freelancer's portfolio.
There is such a thing as “entry level”. Hundreds of thousands of microbudgetary startups praying for a dozen leaders, this very level of entry, have actually been raised.
There is a common opinion that the level of entry into the market in IT start-ups is not high. This is true if we talk about unsuccessful projects. They are crazy to much.
At least read diagonally the project management literature. Its a lot, and almost all the books are good.
It is advisable to learn from the mistakes of others, and not on their own. How do you think?
Design
The taste and color of the comrades do not. The vast majority of inexperienced startups who perceive design projects, invest more money and attention in it than they should. At the same time rely on the experience of Steve.
Yes, Steve was very attentive to design. But he was operating with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and was engaged in the optimization of already running projects. Not experiments at an early stage, but less than 1% of the budget of promoted projects.
As a result, create designs in which a lot of "meat". Often they turn out to be difficult-to-wear, because designers obediently heed the customer and draw what they are asked for. Naturally, such layouts do not take into account the development of functionality, and most importantly, they tend to inspire only their authors. They are bright and colorful, so naturally distract users from what they should pay attention to. Of course, the result is predictable - the interfaces simply "do not work."
Another problem is an obsessive design that some like, and others just don't like.
It is easy to insure yourself - to minimize the work on design, focusing only on the main details (modular grid, palette, signs, style, asceticism), make a fully functional prototype, providing everything that should be foreseen, and give the designer a working program.
This strategy hides another phenomenon.
The fact is that designers, as creative individuals, are a people very suspicious and even touchy. The overwhelming majority of designers requests to remake something is perceived almost as a personal insult.
A simple way to help avoid problems with the design, and with the need to change the designer - to give him to design not schemes and sketches, but a working program. Inspiration will be on top, tested many times!
Trend Fall
The IT industry is amazingly young. It is developing super dynamically, but in fact it is not even 30 years old in the world, 15 years in our country.
Trends in the IT industry are very short. Literally - 3-6 months. Compare with 3-5 years in advertising (industry about 80 years), 100 years in construction (oh old ...). Everything changes very quickly.
Themes quickly spread. During the week e-magpies on tails are distributed to all interested in every new idea. We often see this from the inside - when dozens of authors of the same “new” idea simultaneously start searching for resources and outsourcers for their “unique” project.
There is a popular fashion - to repeat famous western startups. In most cases, only super-popular projects that opened several years ago are in fashion. Thus, repeating them, the authors obviously find themselves in retrospect, falling out of the trend.
An affordable method for successful copying is to correlate the developed business model with modern trends. At the same time, I beg you to make sure that the trends you are considering are relevant. Habr will help!
The most serious problem is delaying time. From the idea to the opening often passes indecently a lot of time. This has a major impact on the success of the project from different angles. We will not list them, as there is a sufficient amount of excellent literature on these issues. I note only briefly that it is very bad.
One way to avoid this catastrophe is to plan the preparatory work for the opening of the project in such a way as to complete them within the average duration of the trend. Namely - no more than 3-6 months.
In the memory of the author and many of his colleagues dozens of projects, the work on which lasted more and much more. None of the projects without major changes was fired. Again, this sign ...
Burn the subject
The most popular fear among startups! And, honestly, justified.
Burn the topic is easy and simple.
- When looking for investors. There are hundreds of pseudo-investors whose main purpose is to collect topics. Run into such very easy.
- When searching for artists.
- In relationships with partners and performers. Especially when it’s the same people. You want your idea to be implemented for the idea.
- With insufficient dynamic development.
What is interesting, and insurance is not difficult.
1. Make development dynamic. Open a project and start working on it ... after you do it the first time, you will find that 70% of the actions were off topic.
2. Do you need investments or a project that brings profit? Honestly, these are different things. In search of investment is easy to lose the project.
3. Limit the circle of those involved. For information and feedback is not necessary to talk about the project. The project has details, and you can explore them separately.
The first commandment of the Japanese samurai "Do not tell anyone about your intentions." Think about it. Banzai!
The young man is pale, with eyes burning
Well clever after all! Such a great idea. Well done!
And what makes you think that he will also be able to successfully fulfill the role of director of a small enterprise?
If, pah-pah-pah, you will have to do the surgery yourself - will you trust the young man? With sparkling eyes and great ideas?
Even if you are the same young man, heed the mind! Hire a manager. Experienced, who reliably knows how to develop projects.
At least - the so-called mentor.
Secret: you should not look for a profile mentor. As a rule, they really don't give a damn about the results. I do not know why, just stating the results of observations.
Find a successful entrepreneur who has succeeded in various areas, possibly far from information technology. The fact is that the principles of successful business in all sectors are the same. And about IT, thanks to the popularity of the trend, a lot of amateurs and laymen have gathered. Even from the village of Skolkovo or the like. And most of them are difficult to determine ... An entrepreneur operating in more traditional areas will give you much more useful advice than a conditional average IT manager.
The author of the project will be an excellent consultant. But do not impose administrative work on him if he does not have relevant experience.
Why is it that in other industries everyone understands the absurdity of the opposite?
The invention of bicycles
Speech on the development.
Let's compare with the auto industry. If successful decisions on the organization of production, when the base is the assembly line, to it - well-established logistics, ensuring the production of components.
If automakers from scratch were engaged in the production of steel, rolled sheets, development of electronics and other low-level tasks - we have not learned anything about these automakers. A successful strategy is to focus on the main aspects, and to implement them actively search for and select tested solutions.
In the analogy with programming, we are talking about the fact that the duration and cost of development can be significantly reduced:
- using popular libraries and frameworks;
- studying technologies of similar solutions (there is almost everything on the githaba and beatback);
- using stable, proven technology, ignoring fashionable chips;
- how to escape from fire from those who use the phrase “their own framework” with reverence in their speech.
In order to succeed - it is necessary to narrow the area under control. What do you want to develop? Your project, or their "your framework"? The last thing, believe me, is expensive and just pointless - there are available analogues, where thousands of man-hours have already been invested, which have huge groups where you can get support. No self-written framework can compete with, for example, the jQuery family of solutions, Adobe products, C ++ base libraries, YII, CodeIgniter, Drupal and hundreds of others.
On the thesis “our framework will help you” it makes sense to ask again - and to whom has it already helped? And evaluate not the design of sites, but the dynamics of the development of projects. This eliminates all amateur offers.
Before writing any modules, for example, acquiring, it has to look for existing ones. They can be used as is, or with refinement, or used as a basis for designing and developing a new solution.
Writing everything from scratch is even worse than “your own framework”. Guaranteed delays and "unpredictable", in fact, a spontaneous increase in the budget.
This may also include premature optimization. Experienced programmers are aware of the so-called principle of harm to premature optimization. Optimization is not meaningless when it is applied to an already running program. The main optimization method is to search for bottlenecks, for example, by the method of unit testing, and subsequent refinement, precisely according to the objectively found.
Many newbies begin to optimize even before they get something workable. In 100% of cases, this does not bring benefits - time is spent a lot, but they do not guess at the bottlenecks. It is nonsense to guess, instead of investigating and making decisions based on objective, real, and not imaginary information.
Universal methods
Strategy
The following phenomenon is well known to experienced designers. Scrupulously worked out and balanced is easily spoiled by one or two wrong actions.
The best idea is easily spoiled by the so-called “bottlenecks”. As a rule, they are not noticeable at the design stage, and only after the fact are revealed.
In order to insure the project from failure, it makes sense to do the following.
1. To narrow the object area. Throw away all unnecessary, leaving only the most important details.
2. Run the design! In fact, the degree of elaboration is of secondary importance. The fact that the idea, strategy, tactics and details are stored not only in your imagination, but on paper, is initially important.
Imagine you want to build yourself a house. Will you work without a drawing? That's right - they would like some, but you will make both a drawing and an estimate.
It is completely incomprehensible why startups ignore design. It is not necessary for this to hire RBC consulting. Start with entries in a text editor or in evernote.
Make two documents: "Everything" and "Basic." Thus, you can capture all the ideas, improving the quality of further analysis, and separate the wheat from the chaff, choosing really important facts.
To understand whether the chosen aspect is important, simple. Make a “Master” document in a two-column table format. In the left write factors. In the right - what these factors affect. Objectively, and with an explanation of how it is affected. If the cell in the right column is empty, or written unconvincingly - this is a potential candidate for postponement.
Structure and simplify the action plan until it becomes amazingly simple, and you can put down the relative dates around each of the items - thus obtaining a schedule for the project.
Tracking the implementation of the schedule and will be your main goal for the near future.
Analysis
Analytics is considered the lot of nerds.
Well and good! While your competitors are thinking about destinies and nerds - you will protect your money, effort and time by conducting a self-contained reconnaissance before the outbreak of hostilities.
Adequate analysis costs are easy to determine. They should be less than the costs of opening a project.
Tip one: write everything down. And draw. The logical (abstract) thinking of a person is arranged in such a way that it works very quickly, but is able to process only 3-7 facts at a time.
Writing and sketching even the obvious - you achieve two goals. First, you record the data for subsequent conclusions. Recorded - will not be forgotten. Secondly, you free your own abstract thinking for more useful than trivial thoughts.
The important point is that the recorded thoughts look more vividly than in fantasy and in words. It makes sense to record everything. By the way, all successful businessmen do just that. If you are too lazy to write - use a voice recorder.
Then you can re-read, and think again, making useful decisions. Your results will be brilliant.
Interview
For data collection, in addition to reading the Internet, it is also useful to conduct an interview.
You have a definite opinion on specific issues. Clear and convincing. But in order to reduce the number of errors - this opinion must be objective.
As Einstein proved, everything is subjective. Therefore, in order to reduce the number of errors, it makes sense to collect opinions. The decision to take anyway you, but! The more opinions taken into account, even frankly "wrong" - the more points of support for your decision. The more relevant and successful your decision is.
You can interview both colleagues and hypothetical users. To ensure relevance of results, include representatives of bright and medium representatives to be interviewed.
Use the well-known copywriting technology:
1. Make a brief. The more the better. Only upon completion of the work on the brief do not forget to highlight the most important aspects, and include them in the short version. Make two versions of the brief - short, and full, for those interested.
Questions in the brief must be open. There are a lot of recommendations on this subject in the literature for advertisers and marketers.
2. Get involved in the survey service.
3. Conduct personal interviews and conversations, independently and diligently impartially filling out the brief on the results. Mark all ideas and thoughts that you have not foreseen.
At the same time, the idea of ​​scorching is not necessary You can create impersonal polls, separating them and formulating questions in such a way as to study opinions, but not hint at the topic.
I will tell you a good way to ensure security from unauthorized dissemination of the idea - to pretend that you have another topic. Feel nonetheless, only parametrically similar to what interests you. Parameters and fix - in the amount you get a bright enough and self-sufficient picture.
Received information and use to revise the idea and its individual parameters.
Prototype
Probnichek is significantly cheaper vial. The effect of probing is the same, but the risks are less.
The bottom line is that the prototype is fully functional. Choose the most important functions, think up an interface that is simple and understandable for a knowingly wide (that is, unprepared) audience, and implement it with a small budget. Run a mini-project, and carefully examine all its characteristics - from statistics to single sales. Sure - you need user feedback!
Interestingly, champion projects are born from prototypes. Often they even slightly change in the process of development. A striking example is Gmail.
After some results are obtained from the prototype, 3-6 months after launch, it makes sense to think about its development. But this time you will have already objective information about various aspects of the project. And your management decisions will be much better.
The beauty of the prototype is that it allows you to try out ideas and strategies not even in miniature, but with minimal investment. It makes no sense to share with someone and give large pieces of the future of the pie for the most modest participation at an early stage. In most cases, a minimum amount of investment is sufficient. Make a working version of the project with a minimum set of the most important ideas, and start to work.
More about prototyping:
- a super-fast, in fact, full-featured prototyping technique will allow you to quickly stake out a place in the sun, and develop further;
- by speeding up development and minimizing costs, you are more likely to get into a good trend, and less likely to open up simultaneously with a lot of competitors;
- fundamentally - to give life to the project. Instead of a lengthy and unsuccessful search for large sums with an enormous risk of burning an idea - to open a project with deliberately modest costs, and develop it relevantly, based on real objective data, and not on dreams and assumptions.
Non-core prototyping
Very conditional wording.
It is possible to assess the success of the project by performing one or several experiments in an abstract format. The purpose of the experiments can be:
- assessment of the volume of the target audience;
- assessment of the relevance of the interests of the target audience;
- careful assessment of the relevance of the startup idea.
This will help the copywriter, or you can make yourself. Talk to people on the topic, post articles and questions in communities and forums, and draw conclusions.
Before investing money, personal time and effort in a large project, it may be worthwhile to make a small, but distracted. Not the same, maybe not even on a similar topic, but working with the same target audience, with the same business model - you can try out completely different aspects, and the price of the experiments will be quite modest.
The results of the experiments can be used as input data in the analysis and design of the perspective of the main idea.
Reviews
Bad feedback is one of the most valuable tools of a good director. Only a dissatisfied customer will quite sincerely tell you what, how and why he did not like it.
Internet projects have such a feature that its users are passive. They do not need to speak out loud, go somewhere or do something to use the provided. They can use it completely silently. And even if they don’t like something - they are completely cynical, they can simply ignore what is offered, or ignore the shortcomings, and you will never know about these problems.
Dissatisfied customers, on the contrary - do not stint on the details.
The specificity of this business is that weaknesses often create more problems than strong solutions - they promote a project in the front. Because of the “narrow necks” there is an outflow of visitors, reduced loyalty, problems in the implementation of interface scenarios and other troubles.
It is an angry, dissatisfied customer that will help you learn about these issues. Down with rose-colored glasses! Teach your technical support staff, do consulting and reviewing reviews yourself, take many effective measures, invest in getting feedback, whatever they might be. And analyze each.
Negative reviews are priceless. A dissatisfied customer can let you know how to get hundreds and thousands of satisfied people. This is not my discovery.
The most evil mistake of startups is deafness. In successful entrepreneurs, the ears are usually open, and they invest money and develop projects to get user feedback.
Strong solutions
In accordance with the Pareto principle, only a small part of the actions leads to the achievement of a potentially large part of the result. It works, it is physics, and it is a fact.
Make a table. In the first column, in detail, tezisno - all solutions, all functions, chips, gadgets, features of the interface and design of your project. In the second column write what each thesis affects.
Then, only then - in the third column, evaluate the degree of influence of the thesis on the result. Points must indicate relative importance, that is, how much a specific item is more important than a neighboring one. It is not necessary to philosophize, limit the scale of 5 or 10 points. Simplicity will play into your account, in this case.
Sort the table by the third column. In theory, only the first 20% are significant.
When planning, select them in a separate document. This is something without which the project will not be able to live and develop. These aspects should be given the most attention.
From the rest, select those items that directly or indirectly affect the involvement and loyalty of the audience, as well as those that inspire the authors or key users of the project. Buttons for sharing and login through social networks without forms for registration got there?
Form them with a “gentleman's” package - something that just should be.
In this way, you can identify useful concepts for the development of your project, and weed out an assumed one.
Write in a personal, what would you like to know in the next article.
Thank you for your attention and good luck!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/169005/
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