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Enthusiastic Project Part 1: People

I am afraid to seem not original, articles about development experience are not uncommon. But I would like to share my experience and thoughts from a slightly different point of view and about the special format of collaboration - when several unfamiliar people do a joint project. Having missed technical obstacles, which are full of similar articles, I would like to devote the first part of the story to people completely. The second part - to specific figures and prospects of the project (not very big), I have nothing to hide.

Start

One person has an idea, not to say that it is very original, but has an innovative vision of an old problem. He can also make up and design. The other person has programming skills, has free time and is generally bored on a permanent basis. The other has the skills of organizing work, there is a desire to participate with the hope of future income. There is still an okhuyenny illustrator who also has free time.
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They all do not know each other, but having gathered on one site, in the post “ Let's stir up something ”, they get together and make a project. So, not even planning when I will undertake the implementation of the old idea, which I probably would not have taken, the work began and the site was born.

Everything is so simple, what it would seem to write more about. But here, in the same post on the search for accomplices, a team also gathered to develop another project, but they still did not reach the final, as we did. Why? I understood this from my own experience, because we, too, were close to failure. This experience I want to share.

Conflicts

If your team consists of people who have long been familiar, then you are lucky, you are less likely to shit within the team. Of the few experienced people who knew about the beginning of the development of the project, all at once promised me that we would try. It seemed that quite respectful and compliant communication was going on inside the team, it seemed that at the very least I would give in, it seemed that it wasn’t about us - and they had fought, and maybe we were lucky that we hadn’t gone completely. Here it is a matter of simple psychology, the first months of communication between unfamiliar people are always calm and compliant, you can know it by yourself - when you enter a new working team, you and others behave cautiously, looking to others, not knowing what to expect from them and what reaction can be obtained on the true behavior of your personality.

And now, after a couple of months of communication, the participants showed their true nature - I myself turned out to be poorly compliant to someone else’s vision of the project and my opponent was with exactly the same position. How to act in such a situation - there were collegial decisions and not in my favor. It seemed - well, how can you do this (the design element, for example), they don’t understand, it’s not their specialization, this project went to hell, it’s still a shit. There was a real desire to quit, but still enough will to not make important decisions fleeting. And after a couple of days, everything is changing, the emotions about the controversial issue no longer interfere with reasoning and the concession does not seem so terrible. Once again, I realized the loyalty of the saying - who twitches, he loses - this rule is true not only in the stock market. Now, through time, these questions seem to be quite a trifle - and in some places I am glad that the collegial decision was not in my favor, understanding the infidelity of my judgments. Believe me - there will be a thousand corrections after the launch, everything that seems to be bad in work can be changed.

Motivation

The second, very important problem, turned out to be a programmer. It lays down the main problem - a large amount of monotonous work. He has motivation, but a little - hypothetical future incomes and participation in something new. But in essence, this is an enthusiasm for which you don’t pay and you owe nothing to anyone. And probably many of us faced with such a situation, when the enthusiasm for some topic fades out after a week or two. I myself sometimes behave shamefully - promising to do work for a small fee, but disrupting the deadlines and feed them with breakfasts. It seems - well, now there is no desire to get behind this optional work, but tomorrow it will be very easy to do. There is no motivation - there is no need for small money, direct contact and responsibility to the customer is not felt - such an amorphous need to do something, it seems possible, but not interesting. So here, I had to listen to excuses and honest refusal to do the work (which is better). Therefore, the project went through several programmers - the first one started and quit, a couple more did not even get down to work, only having familiarized themselves with the project, and only the latter sat down tightly and made the basic part of the project. I think we were lucky to find such a person through the weeks of search, so I’m especially grateful to our programmer Sasha, who at the moment lost interest in the project, but without which the ideas would have remained on the layouts and sketches.

Solutions

And there are no universal solutions to these problems if you are certainly not a hypnotist and do not zombie the project participants for fruitful activities, and then zombie them so that they will zombie you. Perhaps you are lucky if you are a programmer and project initiator at the same time. You will have more motivation - because you are building your home, for the most part, planning your authorship, and not working for someone - for you this is a method of self-realization. But I advise you to take an experienced designer to the team and listen more to it - I have seen how a programmer makes a project entirely on his own. And it turns out to be completely not usable, even if it is saturated with theoretically convenient functions - promising ideas are lost behind a rough interface and appearance. Of course, there are exceptions everywhere, I know programmers who combine great designer and designer as well.

If you are not a programmer, then try to give him to invest as much of his ideas in the project as possible so that he feels it in part with his own. I think few people will want to do the project with enthusiasm, if you are its technical performer and did not participate in its planning. And, from experience, if a project participant tells you once again that he will take up the task in a few days and is busy now, is sick, problems, then most likely this is a lie or a greatly exaggerated truth. He simply does not have the determination to do the work - this is not bad, such is a person, not perfect. Do not demand much from him, imagine yourself in his place. Perhaps you should speak frankly with him about the attitude towards the project, although this is not always possible - depending on what character he gets. Perhaps such excuses are a sign to the beginning of the search for a new performer, because your own desire to do the project will also go out in moments of stagnation.

And it seems to me that having the 4 people in the team helped us bring the project to the final, if we were two, it would more likely have died out. In addition to a collegial solution, which somehow resolved conflicts, several people create more activity. When you see someone doing something, your own determination to work also increases.

At the moment I have to invest money for the development of the project, I no longer amuse myself with hopes that someone will do something for me. I am glad that the basic part of the project was done without investments, otherwise the project would not have been born into the world due to insufficient funds in his pocket, and I consider investors to be universal evil - this is not much different from working for an uncle. Although now the income does not smell, but the costs are tolerable. Specific figures in the next article.

That seems to be all, I certainly did not discover any truths, but perhaps it was just interesting to read and mentally prepare future developers for some difficulties. Thanks for attention. Project Holivars.ru

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/67434/


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