Muse Concept

[JohnOwens]

I'm currently in the process of putting together my first muse but thought I would run it by you guys first to see what you think of it, My background is in software development and i'm quite familiar with the whole software development process from project initiation to software release, i've recently sold a SD business that uses the concepts i plan to describe so i know they work.

I've noticed that a number of people on this site are using sites like eLance for their software development needs, i'm sure a number of you have been stung by how much work is needed to manage a software development project through to completion, and possibly have been dissapointed by the quality of the software you have recieved back.

My muse concept is to produce an eBook that describes each stage of the software development process, obviously not everyone on this board is a software developer, so the key would be to try and keep it as simple as possible and to provide example documents & templates where appropriate e.g. an example Functional Specification document.

The eBook will be supported by processes, example documentation and templates as well as tools that professional software developers use to manage software projects in the real world, the website that will acompany the book will have a forum that will allow all the readers to post various issues/comments/hints they have on software development in the outsourcing world.

The aim is to allow people that out-source software development to produce consistant, high quality and reproducable results in your software projects

Does this sound like a go-er or is everyone quite happy with the results they are getting through elance etc?

[atiff]

i like the idea, i may even buy that. Alot of the programming stuff out there gets too technical and boring and while authors attempt to make it fun, the geek within always comes out. I like your concept of really breaking it down to simplicity.

[buddha377]

Well, as a person who has been stung multiple times by outsourcing I can say that it is not all its cracked up to be. I've personally been at about 7 companies (I am an IT consultant for big web firms) that had failed outsourcing projects. I also raised money for an awesome program that I outsourced to India and had to scrap 100% of the code and start over.

So if you actually can deliver then awesome. The thing is people who are too cheap to design software in house are probably too cheap to buy a training program to teach them how to do it right. :) They are trying to save money and they think they can shortcut the system. But when they find that the code that was developed over night is crap and they send an email and then come back the next day and its fixed wrong and they send another email and find its still not fixed the next day, they quickly realize that they have paid just as much as they would have developing here and gotten shittier software. :)

About the only thing elance is good for is very simple products and cookie cutter websites.

This does not sound like a muse product, it sound like a product you would sell to large companies that are considering outsourcing. In fact, I had a programmer come to me with this very idea three years ago. It didn't fly.

Buddha

[JohnOwens]

The key to this project would be to keep it simple, software development as you know is a complicated field, you are never going to develop a "cookie cutter" approach to managing a software project.

Where I see this project coming into its own is in the template examples that I would offer, showing beginners how to write a functional spec etc, giving them boilerplate advice that should always be evident in a spec.

I'm in the process of building a seperate muse project and I'm planning to use some outsourced software development resource to produce it, giving the system a dry run in my own project should help to define the structure of this project.

I'd be keen to hear more about your experiences with outsourcing and where its went wrong.

Thanks for the great comments

[final_id]

John:

Are you familiar with 37 signals (just Google it). They're a software firm in Chicago which creates DELIBERATELY SIMPLE software, WITHOUT the extras. Often it's free to use on the web, usually some kind of business productivity software.

Their philosophy is similar to what you might be thinking of. Their products, of course, bear only a little relation to your E-book idea, but I think if you look at them you might get an idea of how some of the "earth-shattering" implications, of the point of view that you share, could be handled.