Idea Incubator Prototype

Hello.

The purpose of this article is to present one of the ideas that have accumulated in my mind and test it for vitality. You know how in flexible methodologies - they make a prototype and show it to the customer. I decided to do the same, namely: I took the key functionality and described it as a user story.



Before the presentation of the product, it is necessary to describe the subject area.

I position my product as a tool for “incubating” ideas. Recently, the concept of “incubator start-ups” has become fashionable, but what should those who have not grown from the idea to the startup stage do? In this regard, I was born an assumption - many ideas die, remaining without the support of a strong team. The task is clear, the problem is outlined.



For the first iteration, I offer a tool for incubating ideas and finding personnel that can later grow to a full-fledged service offering the following range of services:

1) Business and system analysis of ideas;

2) HR management and search for personnel for a startup.

3) Search for interesting projects for the applicant.



Get some hybrid social network and the exchange of freelancing. But it will be a very “smart freelance exchange”. The employer does not offer a job, but “invents” the project together with potential employees.

Each product must have a beautiful name. The name that distinguishes it from other products of the information landscape, which is used by the target audience of this product. I suggest working title FocusTeam.

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We return, actually to the User Story of the project. Do you mind if I give illustrations in UML? This is the most familiar technique for me.

In this part of the article I will tell two stories that happened with two characters. The first character will bear the name of Misha, and his need is to tell about the idea. See Pic. one





Fig. one

Misha - Project Manager, works in a company that is a contractor for a large plant and services a product they once wrote. A lot of hoteles come from the customer and a lot of small projects are carried out on them. Misha has been leading the project since his birth, he has a lot of ideas, but the customer does not want to waste time and money on them.

Then he decided to talk about the idea and miraculously got on the FocusTeam site.



On the start page, Misha saw a form called Focus, in which the system proposes to write down the idea. Filling in the form fields, Misha receives hints like:

- 90% of users read ideas consisting of no more than 200 characters.

- The idea should cause the reader goosebumps.

- Attach to the Focus form a couple of documents with a detailed description of the idea, if they exist (we will call them Focus Art.)

Misha does not have a detailed description of the idea, so he wrote:

“A distributed core operating system for the Internet of Things. The goal is big computation on small devices. ”

And clicked the "Focused" button.

A dialog box appeared with a call for authorization on the service.

Misha is registered on Facebook, so he allowed FocusTeam access to his personal data.

The system raised the question: “what skills can he cover in his project?” Misha chose the roles of Product Manager and Project Manager, and also indicated the limits of his financial and resource investments. Namely - $ 1000 starting capital, 1 home server and 30% of personal employment in the project (he has not risked throwing the main source of income)

Then the system asked him - "What do you want to do now?"

A. Discuss the idea

B. Start banging the team.

Misha still does not know the vitality of his idea, so he chose option A and went to sleep. But it was not there, after half an hour on Skype, Misha received the following message:

“Good evening, you are welcomed by the business architect of the FocusTeam team. I have a couple of ideas and a proposal to discuss them. ”



Misha talked for about an hour with a member of the team and made several adjustments to his idea.

The next day, a certain Grisha contacted him. He is an experienced developer who specializes in the development of embedded systems and FocusTeam recommended him the project of Misha with the highest priority.



Misha gladly responded to Grisha's calls and together they described the subject area. Misha also threw a couple of tens of dollars into the FocusTeam account so that the idea would be in the Top for a couple of days. A weak team has a couple of artifacts and a few ratings. Things are already going well. It's time to think about the team.

Misha consulted with Grisha and added Focus with Team forms - vacancies in the team.

According to Grisha's advice, these were the roles “Analytic”, “Marketer”, “Developer FrontEnd”, 2 developers S. Grisha became the Project Architect.



Next, work went on finding candidates, the HR system of the FocusTeam project gave hints to candidates, Grisha selected people who applied. And Misha, meanwhile, was thinking about the project plan.

And so, we looked at two cases: Tell about the idea and Churn the team. But I promised to tell you 2 stories. And so, in fact, the story of Grisha.



Grisha is an architect of embedded systems. Previously, he worked for a large company and even participated in the development of the operating system, but the project was bent and is currently working in freelancing, dreaming of great things.

Grisha has only one goal - to take part in an interesting project. He has long been hooked on FocusTeam and on his Twitter daily there are notifications about new ideas, polls, suggestions. Let's draw our hero in Pic. 2



Fig. 2

One winter evening, he receives another notification from the FocusTeam HR system. “This is what I once did,” thought Grisha, but was disappointed by the lack of artifacts.

Grisha on the recommendations of the system "90% of users communicate via Skype" wrote Misha and, it turned out, not in vain.

So, does the applicant have less needs? You ask. I will answer - of course not. I will say even more, there are rather vague boundaries between the roles of the applicant and the “owner of the idea”, but for simplicity I have divided these two roles.

I suggest to finish my story as follows:

The project is already in full swing. There are 5 more new members. Misha said: "Everything, it's time to write a charter and a plan." A large Skype conference took place at several o'clock and according to the results a charter and an enlarged plan appeared, which Misha carefully distributed to all participants.

Is the story with FocusTeam over for this team? After all, the core of the team, the team of ideological leaders. “No, I will not delete the profile of the project,” thought Misha, “you may always need new people or new ideas for the project.”



Afterword .



I sketched a rather superficial prototype of the system, but, nevertheless, it is possible to determine the target audience of the new service and understand its main idea.

The site itself, with which our main characters interact, is just a tool for automating a business process in which many people participate. Note that in this scenario only the business architect is listed among the living participants of the system, a live person can also stand behind the HR system, but with a greater desire it can be automated.

In general, I told you the very essence of the idea, while there are many conceptual questions. If my idea gets a positive assessment, I will continue to study this topic. Thanks for attention.

UDP: based on discussion results: it is possible for people to evaluate and evolve ideas more interestingly than the functionality of selecting start-up partners. I will try to launch a vote in order to find out the reader’s opinion on this issue.