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As a developer to open your business. Planning

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I hate introductory articles. They have a lot of water and almost no sense. I will try to make an introductory article at least a little informative. I will tell you more about myself in the following.

This is not a success story.


I have long had the idea to make a blog about the process of learning something first-hand. It is surprising that there are very few such materials on the Internet. At the level of a professional, other processes take place than at the level of an amateur or a beginner. And in order to succeed in your business, you must go through all the levels in order.
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For beginners there are always some spacers that help them adapt. Sort of little wheels for a bike. As they fit, the struts are removed - they are no longer necessary.

Struts accelerate the process and not slow down, as it may seem at first. In the example with additional wheels - this is obvious.

About these extra wheels, and I will tell.

Where am I now


So that my words are not an empty sound, I have to tell a little about the company. I will try to exclude references to the brand so that the publication is not perceived as an advertisement.

Home Studio exists for almost a year. The SP was officially registered at the end of 2015. The company reached a stable profit in 2 months after the start of work and now we have customers both in Russia and in the western market.

We develop websites, mobile applications, and provide hosting and project support services. We develop other software individually, on our own initiative. Non-core software still has to deal with often.

Now we have an office and a steady income. It floats a little, as I constantly experiment with sources of orders. But the life and development of the company is enough.

The initial investment was very small - about 300 thousand rubles. In my case, they did not play an important role, since the total costs for obtaining a satisfactory income amounted to less than 20 thousand rubles.

I had no experience in business, so I was very careful and minimized my risks. At the moment, I have spent part of the funds on various studies to close the blind zones.

Our profit minus team salaries and mandatory expenses is about 80-150 thousand rubles a month. This amount is completely reinvested in the company. This is enough for development, but my salary is currently less than 50 thousand rubles, which is almost four times lower than my market value. In other words - I have not won yet.

Now that we have met, it's time to talk about business.

Do not make a business plan


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In my opinion, the stupidest thing you can do before you go on a free swim is to make a business plan.

You know nothing about what you have to work with in the coming year. Nothing!

Not only can you not say how much sales you will have, you cannot even tell how much time you will have spent on programming or creating a design for a business card website.

Perhaps you think that I am talking nonsense - you are a good programmer, perhaps a project manager.

But the thing is that the speed of work of beginners differs from the speed of work of professionals. And nonlinear. And if it can somehow be taken into account, then you will not take into account the differences in the behavior of clients from different segments.

If you work in a developed company, your experience will be poorly applicable to what you have to do at first.

I made the calculation of the enterprise only 10 months after the start of work on the studio. And even then there were several blind zones, despite the fact that I tried to collect statistics as thoroughly as possible.

And this calculation is not at all similar to what I expected to see when I planned to create a company. Now I can use it somehow: by changing the number and effectiveness of employees, I can calculate monthly income.

But there is still no business plan. What could be a business plan if there is insufficient data on growth rates?

Plan goals


If we cannot make a business plan or an estimate of the value of an enterprise, we simply need ordinary planning.

If you do not plan at all, then you will slip for months on level ground. When context is present, most questions will be fairly easy to answer.

I usually do 3 types of planning:


Company vision


The first thing to do is to make a company description:


There is complete freedom - write down everything that comes to mind. Describe your future company. The bigger, the better! If the descriptions conflict with each other, write them down anyway.

This technique is borrowed from the Unified Process , because the company is also a project.

Now you need to make a list of goals. The goals you need to achieve in order to become the company you described. As a rule, these goals are quite common.

Examples of goals:


Examples of my goals now:


Goals are not just a trifle. They are really necessary.

Believe me, in the process of work, you often get confused in yourself. Sometimes the most profitable way for a company at the moment is simply not consistent with its goals.

I don't even have to go far to give an example! We skidded on Upwork simply because projects from there cost more than projects in Russia. Only this is unprofitable, if you dig deeper - word of mouth and PR are not there. This means that the company will grow more slowly.

Goals for the quarter


Next, I turn to the definition of goals for 3 months in advance. For this, I choose promising goals that are well combined with each other. For example:


Then I divide my goals into tasks, for example, about PR:


Three-month goals are needed in order to fix the company's movement - to build a logical sequence of actions. This is how to make an entity diagram before creating a class diagram.

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Goals are generally very useful. They help to perform several tasks simultaneously.

For example, if you get a client who needs payment through Paypal, you can create a common set of classes for working with payment systems, which will be useful in the future.
Or vice versa, if you don’t need Paypal in the near future, and time is running out, then there is no point in spending additional resources on developing your classes.

I initially set myself the goal to write articles on Habré. Solving interesting problems I kept a detailed skeleton for articles. Now I have blanks for 5 articles that just need to be arranged. And this is just a technical part.

Plan for the month


I believe that the optimal planning horizon in the mode in which I used to work is one month. I discovered this by experiment - this is the number of days within which I can predict (control) the speed of development with an error of less than a day, that is, 3-5%.

If we take a smaller gap, I will see fewer events. If greater, an inaccuracy will appear. It can be considered the size of the sprint to which I was used.

Planning the development “a little bit” is more difficult than other processes in the studio, so I decided to transfer this system to other tasks.

If you have no development management experience, then you just need to adjust the work plan every week.

Monthly plan consists of tasks that are divided into subtasks. Each task has a due date, a performer, and an estimate of the execution time. Our task is to ensure that all tasks are completed on time, and the execution time is as expected.

The due date is your commitment to the client. It reflects the speed of development.

We are more interested in estimating the execution time. Or rather, her attitude to real labor costs. It reflects the real effectiveness of planning and work. And then the errors will be much higher.

We have all the tasks performed on time. If someone does not have time to do it, I will simply ask him to stay at work or change the day off with the working day. But does this mean that all tasks are performed efficiently? Of course not.

If for some tasks it took too much time, then for others they may not be enough, which will lead to stress and processing. If tasks are performed too quickly, there may be downtime between the interaction of several employees, and this may lead to a drop in efficiency.

Planning efficiency


All types of planning I spend every month. First, summarize, then make a plan. The company's vision and goals are also adjusted every month.

This helps to keep a hand on the pulse and collect statistics on the speed of solving problems.

Moreover, competent planning allows you to achieve the optimal quality of task performance. This is a very important aspect that affects the increase in profits.

Suppose there are 5 small orders for the current month. For the portfolio they are not suitable. Why not set aside extra time for one of these to maximize quality and include the project in your portfolio?

I look at short-term goals and see that they include a quantitative improvement in the flow of orders (hiring sales managers). If the company focuses on active sales, there is no point in wasting resources on expanding the portfolio. It is more logical to spend resources on the elaboration of the presentation of existing projects.

To be continued...


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In my opinion, the first article was a bit torn. I did not want to pour water and reduced the initial volume by half. And still it came out too much.

These articles are aimed at developers with no entrepreneurial experience. For those who are going to start their own business without external investments.

They will also be useful for developers who have no experience in project and team management.

We are much closer to the problems that arise for beginners, rather than developed companies. Here lies the main risk - my words can not be trusted completely . The result is still unknown, which means some tips may be erroneous in the long run.

This blog eliminates the systematic error of the survivor. Either you can visually track the rise of the company, or you can track down the mistakes that led to the defeat.

I have several topics for future articles:


I will be glad if you tell me which topics are most interesting to you. Thank.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/316630/

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