Steven Brown

You know you want to do it, you may even agree you should do it, but how do you justify the days or weeks required to implement unit testing? In larger projects where many developers are involved it is a lot easier to justify, but in smaller projects usually there just isn’t the time or budget, or you wonder why you would use unit testing when you’re the only developer.
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As a programmer there will no doubt come a time, or many, when you are offered shares in a company in exchange for a discounted rate. Most likely the company will be a startup looking to reduce their startup costs. When this happens you need to be very smart about how you proceed, in my experience the people involved with these startups will take advantage of you wherever they can. Here are my tips for dealing with the prospect of working for shares.
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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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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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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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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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