Disclaimer: I am not a professional project manager!
But I have successfully outsourced a relatively complicated project using on-line tools such as RentACoder, eLance and Guru.
This session will highlight:
- The Specifications Document
- Posting Your Project- Making it attractive
- Selecting a Coder- Who to trust?
- Payment and Feedback
Particularly for creative types, outsourcing allows you to focus on your strengths- like usability and feature development- while allowing others to implement back-end strategy, like a tricky memcached installation.
I hope to include actual specification documents that I have used for reference. Maybe we can draft a live spec for a relevant project during the session.
On RentACoder, eLance and Guru my username is nickgray
I would appreciate any input or advice from prospective attendees - let's work together!
Nick Gray
Starting a draft with Scott Kidder of presentation outline.
Real-world Examples
- Brushing your teeth
- Doing your laundry
- Making a phone call to get restaurant closing time
- Driving a car to soccer practice
- Filling up a car's gas tank
- Pouring a glass of milk
- Peeling an orange
- Sweeping the kitchen floor
- Shutting down Windows with an open, unsaved Word document that needs to be saved
- Shuffling a deck of playing cards
- Pick out matching dress pants and shirt
- Raising or lowering the thermostat to X temperature
- Solve a simple addition problem: 2+2
What is an RFP?
A Request for Proposal is a formal document that solicits a third party to provide a specified service at an undetermined price. The voice of the document usually assumes that the third party has agreed to perform the service,
Components of a formal Request For Proposal
- Objective/Summary
- Timeline
- Storyboard or Screenshots
- Deliverables - The bare minimum
- Evaluation criteria - For any bonuses or feedback ratings
- Project management
- Payment terms
Simpler Components
- Requirements (What do we want to do?)
- Specifications (How are we going to do this?)
~RentACoder
~RentACoder is my favorite on-line outsourcing website. The site boasts over 127,000 registered programmers; I have personally worked with 10 of them. There is no obligation for software buyers - Posting a bid request is free.
- Post your bid request
- Receive bids from coders (and communicate further)
- Accept a bid and put payment in escrow
- Work is done by coder
- Receive and approve work
- Rate coder
Elance, Guru.com
I used Elance for a few projects - namely having an Indian team bulk-register over 3,000 AIM screen names for my BuddyGopher project. The quality of programming skills was much lower here, but for graphic design - espeically logo work - I would suggest Elance.wino kredyt mieszkaniowy sprzedam mieszkanie sprzedam bilet
Guru.com seemed even worse than Elance. Lack of serious programming talent.
Assorted Misc Notes
- "If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend four hours sharpening the axe." -- Abraham Lincoln
- "If you don't know what you need to do, it's too early to figure out how to do it." -- Scott Berkun
