This article is for those who don’t have a technical bone in their body, and feel intimidated by the prospect of hiring some guy in India (or wherever)to do it for them. Aside from convincing you that ordering a website IS like ordering a hamburger, this article will give an outline on what you need to know to build your own website.
There is a common misconception that if you don’t know how to muck around with code, you don’t know enough to outsource the building of a website. Let’s just burst that bubble right now- it’s easy. Anyone can do it. Yep anyone, even if you’re still not sure what a blog is, and you think .NET is just a web address 
A Website is like a Burger
mmm weburgerlicious...
Ok, here comes my food analogy… it’s late and I haven’t eaten dinner. Bear with me it should eventually make sense. The premise is that you don’t need to know how your favourite hamburger is made to order it or enjoy it. Likewise, you don’t need to know what’s in the guts of a website to have a freelancer build it. In fact, just like with food sometimes it’s nicer not to know. Blissful ignorance can be a powerful thing
However, just like buying a hamburger, it’s up to you to decide what fillings, buns, and sauce you want. Those decisions are your responsibility. There’s nothing worse then waiting for someone to order when they haven’t worked out what they want. They fumble around, change their mind, and keep everyone waiting. Often they’ll ask their friend or the person serving them ‘what should I get?’ Desperately seeking to dodge that tremendous commitment and get someone else to make the decision… then in the heat of the moment, they order something they didn’t really want. Don’t let this be you when it comes time to build your site. Read the rest of this entry
Tags: blog, entrepreneur, freelance, freelancer, graphic design, outsourcing, Outsourcing How To's, own website, project management, requirements, risk, small business, startup
This article aims to save you time and improve your project success by discussing how to systematically select the best freelancer bids. It is part of a series of articles “How to Find a Great Freelancer Online”.
On any given project, you’re likely to receive somewhere between 10 and 50 bids if you post it to one of the larger recommended sites. As a general rule, the larger the project the more interest you’ll get. Bigger projects are far more lucrative, and occur less often in the marketplace, so freelancers tend to queue far and wide to try and win it.
Don’t bother talking to everyone…
If you don’t have a system for managing this deluge, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bids you receive. Reading them is hard enough… responding to them all… no way! Read the rest of this entry
Tags: blog, blogging, entrepreneur, freelance, freelancer, freelancers, graphic design, outsourcer, project requirements, project success, requirements, reviews
By far the best way to manage change, is to not have any… but we all know that even with the best planning and the simplest task there are bound to be a few holes.
Sometimes it may not even be you that causes the change- it could be your freelancer. So we need a way to keep it organised, and reduce the risk that the project will spin out of control.
In this article I’ve included a few examples of how things can break, and at the bottom is my current system for managing change in *any* small or medium project.
Read the rest of this entry
Tags: blog, blogging, Change Management, entrepreneur, freelance, freelancer, initial requirements, managing change, outsourcer, outsourcing, Outsourcing Basics, outsourcing project, project management, requirements, risk, scope, work effort
This is a brief discussion on controlling change within a live outsourcing project; in particular, ‘reducing scope’, or removing or simplifying functionality. This was a topic I was completely unfamiliar with when I first got into using freelancers. Over the course of a 12 month project, small uncontrolled compromises compounded each other, and in the end ‘broke’ many of the business objectives. Expensive rework, flawed functionality and a system that didn’t work as expected were the price I paid for inexperience.
On a smaller project, a few corners cut here and there may seem like no big deal, and sometimes they aren’t. On larger projects (starting at several $K), or projects that extend over longer periods of time (weeks/months) small reductions in functionality or simplifications of requirements can really start to have a negative impact on your finished product.
Why would you want to cut corners?
You’ve done your plan, you’ve worked out what you need, you’ve found a freelancer who has agreed to do the work. The obvious question is why would you want to cut anything out? Well from my experience, once a project (software in particular) gets underway a couple of things happen that will force your hand.
Your outsourcer for the first time actually takes a good look at your requirements. If you’re not careful, up until this point they’ll have been giving your requirements lip service. It seems totally crazy to agree to a project that isn’t understood… but that’s the way many do it. They’ll have been focussed on the sales effort, and will have committed only very limited resources to actually understanding your requirements. Now all of a sudden they’re responsible for building it and payday is guaranteed… all they need to ensure is that they can turn a profit on it. Read the rest of this entry
Tags: business objectives, effective decisions, entrepreneur, freelance, freelancer, outsourcer, outsourcing, Outsourcing How To's, outsourcing project, project management, project software, requirements, scope, small business
