Sourcing engineers to build our product

Posted by admin | Engineering specifications »

Sometimes you come across people who seem like African guides walking you through a game park at night. These are gems that you need to have on your team to become successful. They’re people who have already treaded the path and know it well enough to be able to make good decisions.

In the case of Events Listed I have been the guide. Years ago I had walked the same park without guides and was mauled by lions - so I learned how to tread it through experience. Ever since this experience I dedicated my life to learning everything their was to know about the park, its risks, dangers & pitfalls to ensure I became a guide who could navigate it without depending on others.

The best lessons in life are the most expensive ones and I can assure you that the cliche that failure leads to success if experienced by an optimist is also quite true.

Where should you find engineers? There is a lot of discussion in India pertaining to the value in using Indian Developers for development. I can tell you this for FREE, Indians are great mathematicians who just have a different culture. There outlook is different to western people because their values differ. Social and cultural norms may differ but the corporate world has been flattened out so much that it hardly matters.

Even in the States, if two different people look at the same piece of art they will in all probably see different sides to it. Every perspective varies. Have you ever watched an interaction between two people then discussed it with someone else who saw the same thing you did and to your amazement, what they perceived to have happened was completely different to what you perceived. Theres a cool movie that came out recently that demonstrates this called Vantage Point. Do see it if you get a chance.

Having said that, your business logic and a functional specification need to be designed in a way which is easy to understand for anyone, regardless of cultural background. Engineers need to know what it is that you expect from them before commissioning them to build it. This reduces the risks of getting something completely different made from what you were imagining and expecting and can cause quite a negative stir to your launch timelines.

I found a good web designer to partner with me who was prepare to share the risk. He and I spent 3 months building and documenting the site from scratch. We began by listing every functionality we wanted it to perform onto power point slide layouts for every page. We then categorized them into work flows. After that we mind-mapped these work flow catagories and how they interconnected with each other until we came up with a functional spec of what we needed the site to perform. Its good to have the right team and partners with you in your venture. Trust me, finding the right people is difficult but vital, so spend a good amount of time evaluating prospects.


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