From idea to implementation. Part One - Failure
Kirill Danilevsky
Today I want to talk about how easy it is to put your idea into a real project. There is one example of failure on the mind. One of my friends, a long-distance one, had an idea to create a city portal. The portal was supposed to be a site with different sections: city news, posters and events, work in the city and all in the same spirit. Naturally, there are many similar projects on the market, in which substantial money has been invested, and which are already widely known. But it was in his city that there was no such site. And in principle, he was right that such a project has long been asking for.
And so, he decided to take up this issue seriously. Posted by TK, created a business plan and financial project with a budget. The project assumed half a year of work with four senior programmers in the state.
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If my memory serves me, then it all began in 2010. Having rushed on the Internet with the idea, the understanding came that it is not interesting to anybody, and to receive thus money for the project it will not turn out. The next idea was this. Since the portal will be citywide, then the project investor must also be from this city.
In search of an investor, it took a couple of months of heightened bustle around business centers and various enterprises. The difficulty lay in the fact that he still could not reach the owner himself. The staff, the phone did not give the boss, and all assistants, secretaries and other deputies, all this was not interesting. In general, it was just stupidly sewn off, and the owners, who might have been interested in it, remained in happy ignorance.
As a result, with a huge amount of bitterness and disappointment, he somehow randomly wandered into the business conference on automation in production. And he met there with the owner of the company for the production of metal-plastic windows, security door and other similar products.
He was able to explain to the businessman the essence of the project, and convinced that he was in demand. In principle, the investor understood that the citywide portal is an interesting idea. After all, there will be present all residents of the city, who are, in fact, its potential customers.
And they agreed as follows.
The investor pays the work of the developers and the salary of my friend who will lead this project. He pays for the design of the future portal and during the first year will invest another 5 thousand dollars in the promotion of the portal and advertising. At the same time, to any of their products, which the investor produces and sells, will attach an advertising flyer with information about the new project.
In return, he receives for life two major places on the site for banners, and the entire business section (with products and a catalog of the city’s companies) will also belong to him personally.
If my memory serves me, the budget, excluding advertising, was about 40 thousand dollars.
So, they signed a contract, and the investor had to allocate $ 7 thousand each in cash every month. The happiness of my friend simply had no limits. He immediately got his hands on cash and immediately went to work.
At the same time, he considered that as an advertisement for the future project, it was necessary to make an overview in the press and on major news portals. No sooner said than done. A large and detailed article about a new city project appeared in the major media.
By the way, my friend was not an IT specialist. He knew something, but did not possess deep knowledge. In the budget, he pledged $ 1,200 for senior programmers salaries. That is, $ 4,800 per month per team. The project was to be created on the framework. And then the first blow was waiting for him. In his city, there simply were no specialists who know the frameworks and know how to work with them. Then it was decided to hire people for remote work. And then he was waiting for the next blow. Less than 2 thousand dollars, with him did not want to communicate.
He did not want to go to the investor and explain the situation. Since the contract was already signed and the money allocated, and some of the money already spent on advertising in the media. The investor could just get mad and demand to return all the money to him and terminate the contract. Therefore, he went the other way. He began to monitor the market of IT programmers in order to understand who he can hire with his own money.
After spending a small amount of time, he made a decision. Create a project on Drupal, as it will be the fastest and much cheaper than on the framework. He hired a team of two midles and two junas. They, just, clearly fit into his budget. At this time, Drupal 7 was just released, but since very few people knew it yet, they decided to do it on Drupal 6.
And then the following happened. For half a year, specialists left the team and came in new ones. The work was not like a structured process, but looked like some kind of rat race. Everyone coming, reworked what the previous one did. Deadlines were thwarted. The investor was just beside himself with anger, tearing and metal. But since he had already invested decently, he added another 15 thousand dollars to the project.
After eight and a half months, a trial release was launched. With the test content “Lori Ipsum” seemed to work somehow, but when they began to score all sections with real content, photos and videos, problems started. Eternally climbed, some errors, something worked incorrectly, sometimes a database error crashed and the portal fell. It was decided to hire a senior programmer for seven days to make a full review of the project, find the bottlenecks and write a list of problems for the Middle to solve.
The specialist was hired and he made the following conclusion. That this whole project is no good, that it was developed by some rare idiot who saw Drupal for the first time, and in general, Drupal 6 is no good. It is necessary to rewrite everything to Drupal 7.
While these clarifications of relations and the search for a way out of the situation lasted, a new project popped up to the market, the city portal with already fully filled content. And one of the famous sites, which made just a small branch for this city, entered the market.
It all ended not very intelligent. My friend, when describing his idea to an investor, did not even stutter that he could lose his money. That this is a very risky investment area. On the contrary, he assured him that everything would shoot and there would be no problems. The businessman, of course, was not an idiot, and he controlled all the costs of the project. But he did not understand anything in the development teams, did not understand the process of creating something virtual. He did real things on real production, and was very far from the IT sector. But when the project collapsed, an acquaintance decided that the investor could misunderstand his explanations, and just left his city for the capital, where he was lost later.
I don’t know if the investor recovered from such a financial collapse, but I personally made the most serious conclusions for myself. It is better not to start any project at all, than to receive investments in this way. And about the organization of the process in general, I'd rather not say anything at all.
Today I want to talk about how easy it is to put your idea into a real project. There is one example of failure on the mind. One of my friends, a long-distance one, had an idea to create a city portal. The portal was supposed to be a site with different sections: city news, posters and events, work in the city and all in the same spirit. Naturally, there are many similar projects on the market, in which substantial money has been invested, and which are already widely known. But it was in his city that there was no such site. And in principle, he was right that such a project has long been asking for.
And so, he decided to take up this issue seriously. Posted by TK, created a business plan and financial project with a budget. The project assumed half a year of work with four senior programmers in the state.
')
If my memory serves me, then it all began in 2010. Having rushed on the Internet with the idea, the understanding came that it is not interesting to anybody, and to receive thus money for the project it will not turn out. The next idea was this. Since the portal will be citywide, then the project investor must also be from this city.
In search of an investor, it took a couple of months of heightened bustle around business centers and various enterprises. The difficulty lay in the fact that he still could not reach the owner himself. The staff, the phone did not give the boss, and all assistants, secretaries and other deputies, all this was not interesting. In general, it was just stupidly sewn off, and the owners, who might have been interested in it, remained in happy ignorance.
As a result, with a huge amount of bitterness and disappointment, he somehow randomly wandered into the business conference on automation in production. And he met there with the owner of the company for the production of metal-plastic windows, security door and other similar products.
He was able to explain to the businessman the essence of the project, and convinced that he was in demand. In principle, the investor understood that the citywide portal is an interesting idea. After all, there will be present all residents of the city, who are, in fact, its potential customers.
And they agreed as follows.
The investor pays the work of the developers and the salary of my friend who will lead this project. He pays for the design of the future portal and during the first year will invest another 5 thousand dollars in the promotion of the portal and advertising. At the same time, to any of their products, which the investor produces and sells, will attach an advertising flyer with information about the new project.
In return, he receives for life two major places on the site for banners, and the entire business section (with products and a catalog of the city’s companies) will also belong to him personally.
If my memory serves me, the budget, excluding advertising, was about 40 thousand dollars.
So, they signed a contract, and the investor had to allocate $ 7 thousand each in cash every month. The happiness of my friend simply had no limits. He immediately got his hands on cash and immediately went to work.
At the same time, he considered that as an advertisement for the future project, it was necessary to make an overview in the press and on major news portals. No sooner said than done. A large and detailed article about a new city project appeared in the major media.
By the way, my friend was not an IT specialist. He knew something, but did not possess deep knowledge. In the budget, he pledged $ 1,200 for senior programmers salaries. That is, $ 4,800 per month per team. The project was to be created on the framework. And then the first blow was waiting for him. In his city, there simply were no specialists who know the frameworks and know how to work with them. Then it was decided to hire people for remote work. And then he was waiting for the next blow. Less than 2 thousand dollars, with him did not want to communicate.
He did not want to go to the investor and explain the situation. Since the contract was already signed and the money allocated, and some of the money already spent on advertising in the media. The investor could just get mad and demand to return all the money to him and terminate the contract. Therefore, he went the other way. He began to monitor the market of IT programmers in order to understand who he can hire with his own money.
After spending a small amount of time, he made a decision. Create a project on Drupal, as it will be the fastest and much cheaper than on the framework. He hired a team of two midles and two junas. They, just, clearly fit into his budget. At this time, Drupal 7 was just released, but since very few people knew it yet, they decided to do it on Drupal 6.
And then the following happened. For half a year, specialists left the team and came in new ones. The work was not like a structured process, but looked like some kind of rat race. Everyone coming, reworked what the previous one did. Deadlines were thwarted. The investor was just beside himself with anger, tearing and metal. But since he had already invested decently, he added another 15 thousand dollars to the project.
After eight and a half months, a trial release was launched. With the test content “Lori Ipsum” seemed to work somehow, but when they began to score all sections with real content, photos and videos, problems started. Eternally climbed, some errors, something worked incorrectly, sometimes a database error crashed and the portal fell. It was decided to hire a senior programmer for seven days to make a full review of the project, find the bottlenecks and write a list of problems for the Middle to solve.
The specialist was hired and he made the following conclusion. That this whole project is no good, that it was developed by some rare idiot who saw Drupal for the first time, and in general, Drupal 6 is no good. It is necessary to rewrite everything to Drupal 7.
While these clarifications of relations and the search for a way out of the situation lasted, a new project popped up to the market, the city portal with already fully filled content. And one of the famous sites, which made just a small branch for this city, entered the market.
It all ended not very intelligent. My friend, when describing his idea to an investor, did not even stutter that he could lose his money. That this is a very risky investment area. On the contrary, he assured him that everything would shoot and there would be no problems. The businessman, of course, was not an idiot, and he controlled all the costs of the project. But he did not understand anything in the development teams, did not understand the process of creating something virtual. He did real things on real production, and was very far from the IT sector. But when the project collapsed, an acquaintance decided that the investor could misunderstand his explanations, and just left his city for the capital, where he was lost later.
I don’t know if the investor recovered from such a financial collapse, but I personally made the most serious conclusions for myself. It is better not to start any project at all, than to receive investments in this way. And about the organization of the process in general, I'd rather not say anything at all.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/390707/
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