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Will You Add? - Outsourcing your Software Development
WHAT ARE YOUR DESIRED RESULTS? It’s good to start out by identifying the results you want. For a business owner or business executive, that will surely include improving your ability to move the company to the next level. You will likely want to sharpen your own time management skills. You may want to discuss company direction, or challenges facing your organization. You might even want to review alignment of your company departments with the overall vision and direction. A coach can help you do all of these and more. But you should take time before you start to get these clear, and to define the results you are expecting in each of your areas of concern.THREE AREAS FOR THE BUYER TO REVIEW So, who is doing coaching, and what are their credentials?. There is a move today among many professions into coaching, primarily into “life coaching”. There is also a move to certify coaches, emanating primarily from companies whose main business is certifying coaches (duh!). The business man or woman who is considering hiring
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Let's say the you are at a business networking function and a salesperson walks up to you and says the following:"Are you tired of the nitty-gritty chores involved with running your business? Need assistance with one of your projects? My company takes care of the work you would be so much better off delegating to the top business students in the country. Don't delay searching for answers when my company can be getting things done at no cost to you!”If this line was emailed to you, you would delete it because it is spam. But, someone is now speaking it to you at a business networking meeting. How do you delete his mouth? You can’t. So it goes in one ear and out the other. You walk away and try to avoid that person all night.Believe it or not, this line is a "top-rated" elevator pitch at elevator pitch website, yourelevatorpitch.com. It sounds like a canned sales pitch. For some reason, there are still sales consultants pushing business professionals and salespeople to develop elevator pitches because "you just never kno
Establish your software requirements
Software development cannot occur without a well structured and clearly defined set of your business’s software requirements, as the work is in essence a process of addressing needs and solving problems. Consequently, development success will depend largely on the time and effort you dedicate to this stage of the process. It is only by analyzing needs and desired functions that a developer can provide you with as accurate a job proposal and cost estimation as possible.
Be extremely thorough and precise at this stage, including key employees’ suggestions and needs, and compile a comprehensible requirements document, separating the mandatory needs from the optional. Draw up a list of potential developers by asking businesspeople you know for recommendations or by researching web directories. Send them the requirements document, as well as information about your company (such as business objectives) and your budget, so that they can in turn provide you with a job proposal and quotation.
Assess the candidate developers
A preliminary assessment of developers’ written proposals and quotations should give you a good indication of their suitability in addressing your needs, but a final decision should be determined by in-person interviews as well. Meeting face-to-face is crucial in evaluating not only the candidates’ services, but their personalities and communication skills too. The latter two are vital aspects in ensuring a strong collaborative partnership with the company, which will largely determine the success of the software development. In your assessment of the potential developers, consider these factors:
If you sell products such as web hosting, wholesale camere equipment, a blog is great for posting content like product reviews, photography tips, and news that is all aimed at a very specific target audience.An excellent example of this is the innovative online retailer AnHosting (www.anhosting.com). AnHosting sell a unlimited number of web hosting accounts every day at a knockdown price, and their blog acts as a content archive with details of all the previous feature accounts. This keyword-rich content attracts a lot of search engine traffic consisting of people who are looking for web hosting.Through their blog, AnHosting has been able to build up a loyal community of bargain hunters who access the web site at the start of each day to check out that day's coupon and often leave comments.A community like this encourages people to return again and again, and you can even use this community to help you generate ideas for new services o
Establish your software requirements
Software development cannot occur without a well structured and clearly defined set of your business’s software requirements, as the work is in essence a process of addressing needs and solving problems. Consequently, development success will depend largely on the time and effort you dedicate to this stage of the process. It is only by analyzing needs and desired functions that a developer can provide you with as accurate a job proposal and cost estimation as possible.
Be extremely thorough and precise at this stage, including key employees’ suggestions and needs, and compile a comprehensible requirements document, separating the mandatory needs from the optional. Draw up a list of potential developers by asking businesspeople you know for recommendations or by researching web directories. Send them the requirements document, as well as information about your company (such as business objectives) and your budget, so that they can in turn provide you with a job proposal and quotation.
Assess the candidate developers
A preliminary assessment of developers’ written proposals and quotations should give you a good indication of their suitability in addressing your needs, but a final decision should be determined by in-person interviews as well. Meeting face-to-face is crucial in evaluating not only the candidates’ services, but their personalities and communication skills too. The latter two are vital aspects in ensuring a strong collaborative partnership with the company, which will largely determine the success of the software development. In your assessment of the potential developers, consider these factors:
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TV commercials are without a doubt, the most popular and effective of all mass media advertising forms. Coupled with all kinds of marketing techniques such as catchy jingles and melodies, animation, special effects, as well as injecting humor, makes TV advertising a powerful marketing tool. Testament to this is the existence of the cutthroat commercials industry and exorbitant advertising fees companies are willing to splurge to convince millions of viewers to buy their products. Think of a 30-second spot during the annual Super bowl that can cost about 2.5 million dollars. This has come a long way from the very first TV commercial aired in July 1941, when Bulova Watch Company paid WNBT a trifle US $9.Most TV ads run from a few seconds to a several minutes, including program-length infomercials. This advertising is so powerful such that virtually everything has been sold on television, from household goods and services to successful political campaigns. Its visual impact has attained unprecedented heights. Television advertising has
Be extremely thorough and precise at this stage, including key employees’ suggestions and needs, and compile a comprehensible requirements document, separating the mandatory needs from the optional. Draw up a list of potential developers by asking businesspeople you know for recommendations or by researching web directories. Send them the requirements document, as well as information about your company (such as business objectives) and your budget, so that they can in turn provide you with a job proposal and quotation.
Assess the candidate developers
A preliminary assessment of developers’ written proposals and quotations should give you a good indication of their suitability in addressing your needs, but a final decision should be determined by in-person interviews as well. Meeting face-to-face is crucial in evaluating not only the candidates’ services, but their personalities and communication skills too. The latter two are vital aspects in ensuring a strong collaborative partnership with the company, which will largely determine the success of the software development. In your assessment of the potential developers, consider these factors:
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When do you tell employees about bad news? When do you tell them about good news?Many organisations have difficulty determining the answers to the former question and do not enough thinking about the latter question and few ask the question, "What do our employees consider to be bad or good news and what news are they interested in hearing?" at all.Further still, not enough thought is given to how the communication of news can shape the culture of an organisation.Bad news or even extremely good news is difficult to keep completely secret. Good or bad, pending major news announcements generally require discussions between senior executives, the human resources function, the finance function and significant groups of line management. Sometimes it requires the pulling together of a project team.Employees are not stupid. They notice when HR, finance and line management are having long meetings locked away in a room. They notice when people are pulled off their normal jobs to conduct a study. They notice when people
Assess the candidate developers
A preliminary assessment of developers’ written proposals and quotations should give you a good indication of their suitability in addressing your needs, but a final decision should be determined by in-person interviews as well. Meeting face-to-face is crucial in evaluating not only the candidates’ services, but their personalities and communication skills too. The latter two are vital aspects in ensuring a strong collaborative partnership with the company, which will largely determine the success of the software development. In your assessment of the potential developers, consider these factors:
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Anectodes? For a job interview? The purpose of developing anecdotes for the interview is to be able to illustrate your skills and abilities to the prospective employer. Stories SHOW the employer what you are capable of rather than simply tell them what you have done in the past. During the interview process, an interviewer may talk to 5-10 candidates for a single position. In order to stand out from the crowd, you have to be able to answer each question in a way that the interviewer will approve of and remember. When you are able to communicate clearly with the interviewer and relate specific events which capture the essence of a particular skill or ability, you will be well ahead of your competitors. Think of it this way: The interviewer asks this question of candidates #1, #2 and #3: “Have you ever been in a situation when you have had to calm down an employee who felt as though he’d been treated unfairly by another employee?” Candid
Experience and expertise
You will obviously want to hire someone who is proficient in the field and keeps abreast of the latest software technology trends and discoveries. Be sure that the candidate is a genuine software developer able to suggest solutions to your problems, and not merely a programmer who wants exact instructions on what program he or she should write. Also be careful of developers who are preoccupied with their particular area of technology specialization at the expense of your particular needs. A good developer should provide you with the type of technology most suited to your requirements.
It is preferable to choose a developer who is both experienced in their own domain and familiar with your particular industry. The reason for this is that they will be aware of the common types of needs (both clearly stated and implied), problems and general expectations in your line of work.
Visiting a candidate’s website should give you a good indication of these aspects, but the best and most direct way to determine a candidate’s experience and expertise is to contact former and current clients. Ask them specific questions about the development company’s general service delivery, response to problems, and the efficiency of the developed software.
You can ask to see samples of software, and test it yourself to see whether it is user-friendly (although remember that training will be provided) and effective.
Industry awards are also obviously a good indication of a company’s expertise.
Size
There are advantages and disadvantages to both big companies and sole proprietor situations. A big company may house all the skills and services needed by your requirements, but you run the risk of getting lost among many clients. The opposite is true for a small company or sole proprietor. Therefore, size is not an important deciding factor. Rather, make sure that the developer you choose can cope with the size
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