7 reasons for the failure of your Internet project

The note is written for those managers who had a negative experience in custom development of sites for their company. Do not be lazy, read to the end. Maybe it will save you a few hundred thousand rubles.

Perhaps right now your site needs to be redone. There can be many reasons for rework: from the banal design obsolescence to the desire to integrate the site with the company's internal infrastructure. Or add mobility to it.
')
Need to call web developers. And if you had experience with these lovely, kind people, and from time to time you wanted to twist something in their head (with a screwdriver) in order to work better - there are reasons for that!

1. Price issue

Suppose you decide to redo your outdated site. What question will interest you first? In most cases - the price. Indeed, “how much does a website cost?” Is usually the first question from which communication begins (this happens in almost 100% of cases, and we receive 4–8 such calls per day in SPIKE ).

Why?

First, the price can be compared. And the most important thing is that there is no need to understand, chew each developer all the requirements and nuances, to understand how they differ (and whether) from each other. In contrast to the muddy requirements, which, most likely, you still can not clearly articulate for yourself (I do not know what I want), the price is a specific number.

Secondly, the price can be pressed. After that, for a while, you feel like a hero. Well, in principle, since the guys bend, it's nice to deal with them;)

Thirdly, the named price takes away responsibility for the formulation of requirements and transfers them to the developer. They promise you to make a project for specific money.

2. Essential criteria

What other essential criteria besides the price do you have? Here they call a lot: time, quality, competencies ... Or rather, how, the developers TOLD about their time, quality and competencies. This is called the "Incendiary promises" :)

3. “Just send a KP!”

Very often, the initial collection of commercial proposals is assigned to someone who is not sorry. (I note that not always: in responsible companies that understand the importance of the project, they immediately allocate an intelligent and responsible person and give him enough resources and authority).

Nevertheless, the situation when “collecting prices” is entrusted to a green employee two weeks old is very common. Such an employee, as a rule, knows neither the planned budget of the project, nor the goals, nor technical details. He does not have enough experience, authority and competence. His opinion is unlikely to be taken into account by the authorities when choosing a contractor. His personal perspective on the project - gave the CP and dumped aside.

Do you think such a person would be soared because of your project? Will he thoroughly work out and think through the optimal structure with potential contractors and go into technical details?

Most likely no. Most likely, as soon as the studios start asking him a lot of questions (and they will start if they want to prepare respectable commercial offer to respectable people), he will switch the focus to those who are not asking such questions. And just send KP.

4. Contractor selection

So, here are the selection criteria we have typed:

• Price: they must want a little money;
• Degree: they must sag;
• Incendiary promises: they sing beautifully (just a Turkish choir!);
• Do not ask uncomfortable questions.

HELLO TO OBLIGATORY IDIOTS!



Colleagues, I have a question: what makes you think that these people will make you a project? If the answer is “Well, they promised” - we read further :)

5. Contract - a guarantee of EVERYTHING!

Not really. There are three main reasons for this:

5.1. Let's go, then you will get

Did you start your last project, not fully understanding what exactly you want to get at the output? Probably yes. I do it myself. In general, this is normal (which is why scrum works so well) when requirements are specified along the way. Who cares how it works - then go to the link, read!

However, we want to fix the price immediately. And the requirements are not. Add along the way.

Moreover, in our culture it is quite normal for the attitude to contractors to “I don't care about their profits” and “I want results at their expense . ” I can say from experience with western companies that this is not the case in the USA and Europe.

Question. How will you cheat the development team, if it understands that it cannot earn money on you because of the constantly growing demands?

Right. Poor internal quality. The quality of the code. Crutches

It hurts especially on large projects when you try to develop and maintain them. Everything will slow down, fail and break. And no one wants to take such a project for technical support for sane money.

5.2 But we agreed !?

Usually, both the contractor and the customer agree on the contract with the first persons of the company. In general, they understand everything.
- Petrovich - will you do it?
- Yes!

Then Petrovich comes to the programmers, and there is something like this dialogue:
- Programmers, do it!
Programmers honestly ask:
- Cho?
- Well, here's TK. Will be. Next month…

Fine. And then, when the site is ready:
- Logists, here is a new site for you! Watch now for orders in the admin panel. Here is access!
-! @ #% !!!

The problem is that some people agreed, others will do it, and others will use it. Literally from the first seconds there is a gap of expectations.

5.3. But we can fix all the requirements!

Yeah, right now. Here are two examples:



The cars were called “Handicapped”, or, according to the scientific C-3D (“es-three-de”). The device is near - the brainchild of the company ... Microsoft! Yes, this is the "killer" iPod - Zune player. The brown color shows that the product - complete shit is designed for young people.

What is wrong with both products? The car has wheels, it drives; the player is playing, there is a screen, the list of songs is a wheel. Most likely, the products FULLY correspond to the tasks assigned. It seems like the functions are all in place, but I don’t really want to use the result.

This horror and nightmare is due to the fact that the technical task is often impossible (or difficult) to prescribe non-functional requirements. Even if you aim to get the most detailed description of the project in the TK, it will not succeed. There will always be a double reason for the requirements. And the more detailed you will be to paint them, the more difficult it will be to work with them. But it will not save you from double interpretations.



Most likely, some alterations will appear on the project. And if you bend the developer in the price - get ready, here he will take revenge on you. Especially if the developer realized that his long-term relationship with you will not work. You will spend numerous hours on bickering, whether it was in the TK or not (“Well, if not on the contract itself, then at least on the alterations, I will earn”).

So, the reality is that the contract that you signed and “agreed” does not guarantee you an easy life and a successful project. Alas.

6. We are ALREADY late!

Seriously. As usual, projects start: the Big Boss comes with a soldering iron, and says, “We urgently need the project X. And we are ALREADY late.” And the soldering iron is so big, red. And then everyone starts to run, fuss. The general idea - if you don’t tell people that they are already late, if you don’t drive them into unrealistic time frames - they will relax the buns and make the project for years.

How will the developer respond to the requirements of unrealistic deadlines?

"Honest" will answer: "Not-ee, this is impossible." And do not get a contract. And if you suddenly receive it, it will periodically annoy the customer with whining “we do not have time”, “we are late”. Than, in fact, it will be very unnerving customer, will receive public contempt, censure and bad reputation.

"Experienced" will answer: "I will." Pick up the contract. Then in the course of work there will be vigorous reports: “Everything is on schedule!”, “Everything is according to plan”, and on the last day: “Sorry, the Martians arrived, took the main programmer to Mars, all the servers and the source code. It takes a couple more months to fine-tune your project. ”

I note that "Experienced" will receive on the head only once, and "Honest" will receive every day. The big, red soldering iron from the boss, the desire to show competitive deadlines and the ability to "suffer pain only once" provoke developers to immediately say unrealistic deadlines. No wonder they get ripped off often.

7. Black holes

What is the difference between a hadron collider and a typical web developer company? The fact that they are only trying to get a black hole in the collider, but in development companies it really is!

How and what is happening there - from the side it is impossible to understand at all. The haphazard and non-transparent workflow of web developers is a well-known, but poorly treatable phenomenon. Even if the development processes are good, it is often not transparent to the client. And this, of course, contributes to a "good" relationship with the customer: the guilty one appears. In any situation, we can say: “They have made a mess of something there, so everything slows down, buggy and does not work that way”.

What to do

Actually, I wrote all this not to dig deeper into the painful wound of web developers and customers.

First, you need to understand that modern web-projects are often quite complicated things. We are no longer in the sandbox. And ordering an Internet project is not the same thing as ordering twenty cubes of concrete (although, they say, there are some nuances there). The option "I give them money - they are my happiness" - does not work in principle. The option “I give them money and TK, they give me - happiness” - does not work either.

On technically complex web-projects that are deeply tied to your business processes (or can even completely change them), you need:

• Money (yes, of course).
• Actual requirements and expectations (instead of once for the knee written TZ). Here, by the way, scrum will help well with the ability to change requirements on the go and interactive prototypes instead of thick TK that no one reads.
• Support in the field of power. The project should get the go-ahead at the highest level, and not be the initiative of a marketing boy for a second week on probation. So that the developer has the potential to get the information he needs from those who are interested in the project in your company.
• The prospect of a long-term relationship (so that he knows that this is a project to support and develop him still pre-o-o-lgo).
• Time. Adequate time to develop a system. And adequate time that the project manager on the part of the customer will devote to solving key issues on the project.
• Valid and consistent information. Prior to the start of the project, it is important to take into account the requirements of all potentially interested parties: logistics, accounting, sales, marketing, etc.
• In short, anyone who can touch this attack.

What you need to demand:

Openness Developers should explain HOW exactly they are going to achieve results. Not just promises, but a clear and understandable plan for exactly how the desired result will appear in the right time frame. What techniques will be used for prototyping, design, iteration planning, or scheduling of the entire project, development, daily monitoring, testing, reporting or technical support.

And only in such a configuration on your project can come simple human happiness :)

All good.
July 4, 2014

Thanks:
Sergey Berezhnoy for clever thoughts :)