Yo! So I keep posting this quite a lot, so I thought I'd just make a thread for it. There's a lot of non-programmers on here looking to hire programmers to write their software. I know a lot of you don't want to learn any programming, but I think it's vital you at least learn how software is made!
.
As a software dev, I have a different perspective on what it takes to make it and what I need to make it for you. Anyone in the development world... knows it all comes down to one thing... requirements.
Every, single, little problem and discrepancy that's ever come up on projects I've worked on for others came down to a problem with the requirements. The business asks for one thing... the developer gives them exactly what they asked for... we find out the business never realized what exactly they were asking for. This became increasingly frustrating during my last gig because we would save the email chain between dev and business where we asked the hard hitting questions and even the "are you sure you reaaally want it done this way?" Sure enough, after it's made, after our time and resources are spent on developing it their way, they change their mind! Whenever time is spent to develop a piece that's thrown out for a changed requirement, it's called "dev churn." It doesn't waste the dev's time and money, they still get paid, you just paid for the development of something that went in the trash bin.
SO. For all you people hiring software devs, YOU are the business and it's your money at stake here. Taking a little bit of time to understand what it is your developers are looking for could really help out.
The book I recommend:
Software Requirements 2: Karl Wiegers: 9780735618794: Amazon.com: Books
I believe the book was intended for project managers, but if you're hiring software devs without a team... guess what, you are the project manager! The manager never touches the code, they're just there to oversee it's production.
A little example of learning how to talk to devs and getting want you want out of software...
My mom is an accountant who's job consistently requires new automation work by their IT department. I'd often open my email to find an Excel spreadsheet with a description of what she needs programmed using Excel's API. None of my mom's IT requests would ever get filled... and I know exactly why. Her requests couldn't be filled with the level of information she was giving. I taught her the basics to writing pseudo-code which is just the if-then-else, do this while or x many of times and what do you know, every time she submits a request, it promptly gets filled.
I hope this tip helped someone on the forum!
Stay classy.
.
As a software dev, I have a different perspective on what it takes to make it and what I need to make it for you. Anyone in the development world... knows it all comes down to one thing... requirements.
Every, single, little problem and discrepancy that's ever come up on projects I've worked on for others came down to a problem with the requirements. The business asks for one thing... the developer gives them exactly what they asked for... we find out the business never realized what exactly they were asking for. This became increasingly frustrating during my last gig because we would save the email chain between dev and business where we asked the hard hitting questions and even the "are you sure you reaaally want it done this way?" Sure enough, after it's made, after our time and resources are spent on developing it their way, they change their mind! Whenever time is spent to develop a piece that's thrown out for a changed requirement, it's called "dev churn." It doesn't waste the dev's time and money, they still get paid, you just paid for the development of something that went in the trash bin.
SO. For all you people hiring software devs, YOU are the business and it's your money at stake here. Taking a little bit of time to understand what it is your developers are looking for could really help out.
The book I recommend:
Software Requirements 2: Karl Wiegers: 9780735618794: Amazon.com: Books
I believe the book was intended for project managers, but if you're hiring software devs without a team... guess what, you are the project manager! The manager never touches the code, they're just there to oversee it's production.
A little example of learning how to talk to devs and getting want you want out of software...
My mom is an accountant who's job consistently requires new automation work by their IT department. I'd often open my email to find an Excel spreadsheet with a description of what she needs programmed using Excel's API. None of my mom's IT requests would ever get filled... and I know exactly why. Her requests couldn't be filled with the level of information she was giving. I taught her the basics to writing pseudo-code which is just the if-then-else, do this while or x many of times and what do you know, every time she submits a request, it promptly gets filled.
I hope this tip helped someone on the forum!
Stay classy.
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