Building the Right Product

Starting from the right product foundation

The goal of this package is to make sure you are setup to deliver an awesome product that your customers will love, and that you have planned for the right technical implementation.  You will have a deeper understanding of what it will take to build this product, how long it should take, a through spec that a developer can go execute on, and suggestions for existing software or components you can leverage to reduce development time and cost.  You’ll have a high-level understanding of how the app will work technically and be well equipped to discuss the details with your developer (and you’ll also know enough to call BS if your developer is misleading you)

Includes:

• Review of MVP deck
• Review of any notes, or other documents that will provide context around your product and market
• Competitive review of other products in the space
• An initial 30 minute review call to walk me through the product, and let me provide feedback and direction based on the research so far (and 20 years experience in software development)
• We’ll determine and agree on the product direction and make sure that you are really focused in the right areas.  We’ll hone in on building the right SMVP (*Sellable* Minimal Viable Product) and walk through the changes you’ll want to make.  This may be a difficult conversation, but I promise we’ll land in a place where you’re product is better, and you’ll be able to get it in the hands of the customer even sooner (which also means collecting revenue sooner!)
• Now I go deeper on the product technology and implementation strategy and deliver:
• A redline version of your MVP deck/UI.  This will have a lot of feedback on  the product, usability, user interface, and any gaps you have in the design or flow.  You’ll be able to tweak the MVP deck in a way that will help increase pre-sales, and also remove any ambiguity that will be costly once your developer starts.  The goal of this section is the have a polished and refined MVP UI experience that will blow your customers away, and be easy to understand and implement for your developer.  Getting this right can save you 100’s of hours in development time (&costs)!
• A complete review of your best implementation strategy and product architecture, including the recommended language(s) for developing the product in.  I’ll also spend a lot of time researching to see if there are existing software tools, components or libraries that your developer will be able to leverage.  If there are existing components that you can leverage in your project you will save substantial time and development cost up-front (and also end up with less code to maintain).  I will deliver a implementation document that covers these areas, and it will be something you can share with your developer.
• A final 30 minute review call of you MVP deck, once you have incorporated the feedback, as well as a walkthrough of the implementation guide.  I’ll also provide a set of next steps for your project, so you can hit the development phase running
• Full email access during this phase to answer any questions you have along the way.  I want you to feel great about the product you’ll be building, and have the knowledge and confidence needed to go make it happen.

Cost: $1295

Find the Right Developer & Manage the Development Cycle

Get a Developer Rockstar to Build Your Product

Dev Assist Package
The goal of this package is to assist you in hiring the right developer for your product, and assist you in managing the entire development lifecycle.  You’ll exit with a functional product and I’ll be looking over your shoulder every step of the way to make sure that you find the right developer, and that they are executing correctly.

It is my sincere belief that this package will more than pay for itself in the cost savings you’ll see by hiring the right developer and keeping them efficient as possible.  68% of software projects fail – don’t be a statistic.

This package will give you the confidence and assistance you need to build great software.

Includes:

Everything in the Building the Right Product package, and…

Hiring

• General Guidelines on where to look for a developer, and what your job posting should look like
• Specific guidelines for the type of developer you should be looking for, what we want to look for in terms of skill set and experience.
• Review of your job posting
• A 30 minute call to discuss your job posting and offer feedback.  We’ll also discuss next steps for hiring, and what your expectations should be.  I’ll also provide  tips and lessons learned in hiring that will save you a lot of time (and stress)
• Once your job posting is live, I’ll review the first 10 applicants with you, and provide feedback on the good, bad & ugly.  You’ll learn what to look for in an applicant, and be able to sift trough the applicants to find the best of the best, the gems.
• When you have enough “Gems”, we’ll do another 30 minute review call to work through those and find the best of the best.  We’ll create a shortlist together and then we’ll work through my 3-phase test cycle to make sure the developers really know what they are doing.
• You’ll be able to work through phase 1 of the test cycle on your own (But I’ll just be an email away if you need anything)
• Once you whittle down the devs in phase 1, we’ll walk through phase 2 together, and I’ll help with the grading of the applicants
• We should now have a very short list (probably 2-4 developers) to choose from.  I’ll give you guidance on phase 3, and what the final things are you should be looking for from a candidate (This will be a phone / Skype interview between you and the developers).
• Once you have a winner (but before you hire them), I’ll do a ~15 minute call with them just to make sure they can pass my tests, and to be sure that we’ve found a ROCKSTAR developer who is going to build an awesome product for you.

Building the product

• Now that we have a ROCKSTAR developer, you & I will spend time coming up with a project plan, deliverables, time lines and expectations for the project (We’ll actually be doing a lot of this in parallel)
• We’ll then have a call with the developer to outline the plan, and our expectations for the project.  We’ll answer any questions the developer has, and make sure he has what he needs to be productive and start building your product.  I’ll also spend some time with the developer walking through some of the more technical details of the project (where we want code stored, where we want the test product deployed, general implementation strategies, code quality, testing, how we’ll manage changes and bug tracking, and his general workflow).  My goal is to make the developer as efficient as possible, AND to make sure he knows I’ll be looking over your shoulder on everything technical as the project progresses so we’ll know immediately if he is not living up to expectations.  Developers ALWAYS do better (and stay away from the shenanigans) when they know they are working for someone with a technical background.
• After 3-5 days on the project, you & I will do a through review of what the developer has accomplished so far, including a deep look at the code.  This will be the checkpoint where we ensure to developer we hired is on the right track and will be able to live up to our expectations.
• Moving forward, I’ll do weekly check-ups on the code and general project status.  I’ll offer feedback on where things are so far, and any changes or suggestions I see.  These suggestions will be both in the product as well as how you and the developer are working together.
• We’ll also be doing bi-weekly product reviews together to make sure things are coming together correctly.  We’ll have the developer deploy your application to a website we can look at.  I’ll review it ahead of time, and then we’ll have a 15-30 minute chat and discuss feedback, directions, and answer any questions or challenges you have.  We’ll also look at the general project state, and make sure we are on track and hitting the milestones we set (and figure out what adjustments we need to make with the developer if we feel like things are behind)
• We’ll continue with the weekly check-ups and Bi-weekly product reviews throughout the project, we’ll also work bugs, testing and general quality into these reviews, and make sure the developer is delivering to our expectations (and fixing bugs as soon as possible).  We’ll also be emailing in between the reviews to address any issues or questions you have.
• As we start coming close to a version 1 product, we’ll formalize a hand-off process with the developer so you can deploy the application to your production servers.
• Congrats!  You’ve just put your application into production!

Cost: $3495, which includes 10 weeks of weekly check-ups and bi-weekly reviews.  Additional Months of check-ups, reviews & email access: $695

Complete Product Development Services

Bring Us Your Awesome Concept, We’ll Build It

The Goal of this package to to provide complete “white glove” service for building your application and getting it into customers hands.  You will not have to hire a developer or manage to software development process (or even talk to the developer if you don’t want to) – we do it all.  No stress, no worries – your project is in the hands of an expert team with 20 years of software experience – we know exactly how to execute and deliver great software.

Here is what is included and how it works:

• We’ll go through the complete steps of the Product Package and ensure we land with a great product design, and all of the details fleshed out.
• Once we have the SMVP designed & scoped, I’ll identify an expert developer with the right skill set for your specific application, get them ramped up on the project and then we’ll get started coding.
• We’ll do weekly updates of the product on a website that you can access and review at any time.  We’ll be in constant contact during this time discussing progress, changes and any bugs
• We’ll do bi-weekly 30 minute calls to review the product, discuss progress and answer any questions you have.  We’ll also fully brief you on the state of the project, whats’s done, what’s left, changes you’d like to see, and talk about any suggestions we may have for the product
• We’ll continue with the weekly product updates and Bi-weekly product reviews throughout the project.  We’ll also be emailing in between the reviews to address any issues or questions you have.
• As an optional (but recommended) step, we can put a professional tester on the project near the end to make sure we find any remaining bugs before your customers do, and that the application can scale appropriately for your growth.
• Once the product is ready, we’ll work with you to deploy it to a production server for you.  We can also manage the server and product for you moving forward so you can focus on growing your business & customers (of course this is totally optional, it is your product and you are free to host it anywhere you like)

Cost: $1995 Initially, then $62/Hour, Inclusive,  for product development or testing (No additional fees for project management, servers, software usage, etc), paid weekly.

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