Archive for September, 2007
Darwinian Development: Turning Maintenance Money Into Development Money
by Steven Brown on Sep.24, 2007, under Development
A few years ago I came into a project where the two previous developers had followed the same trend. Both were sitting on maintenance money. Essentially their workload on the project involved maintenance, data entry, tweaks, small changes. This work consumed all of the client’s budget and the site barely improved for several years. The client’s return on this project was diminishing and all seemed lost.
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Darwinian Development: Ongoing Development
by Steven Brown on Sep.21, 2007, under Development
There’s a very important, simple, and significant change you can make to your pricing model that will seriously change your business. Clients and developers are both locked in a world of start-stop development. Have an idea, get a quote, make it, roll in the piles of money. Clearly this is entirely unrealistic. Business never just stops. Ideas are always evolving, markets constantly change, competitors improve, new products are released. So why should any development project be start-stop?
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Darwinian Development: Cashflow Development
by Steven Brown on Sep.20, 2007, under Development
This is one of the greatest tools I found to running a successful and profitable web development company! Cashflow development has great benefits for both client and developer, and sets you up for other important tools, including quoting, debt collecting, time estimation and meeting deadlines.
Have you ever wondered how you can be so busy, landing great projects, getting paid a good hourly rate, but still you struggle financially? Well this is a combination of factors normally: meeting deadlines, debt collection, and cash flow.
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Darwinian Development: Think Big, Start Small
by Steven Brown on Sep.08, 2007, under Development
A core principle of Darwinian Development is to think big, but start small.
At the beginning of a development project everyone is excited, you and the client could talk for hours about the possibilities of what they could achieve, the endless money that will flow in and the amazing experience that will face users from the first click.
This is a very important part of the development process. Feel free to get as crazy as you want with your ideas, it is important at this stage not to let money, technology or other boundaries dictate which ideas you accept and which ones you knock back. At this point all ideas a feasible and achievable. Go wild.
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