redpill

Developing a system for someone you have never met requires a certain set of skills … skills I have acquired over a long time.  I live in South Africa but have developed systems for customers all over the world.

When you need to design, develop, deploy and support a system without a single meeting keep the following in mind:

• Documenting every little detail of the system will not help. The client is not going to go through pages and pages of information. It doesn’t help if you sit with a signed document to ‘cover you’ but you have a very unhappy customer.
• Use and agile software development methodology. If your only method of communication was email and the odd telephone conversation the chances are there have been some misunderstandings and you will need to adapt.
• Deliver early and often (part of the agile development process). The customer will much rather play with his new toy than study a document for hours to see what he is going to get.
• Break up the costs into payments for deliverables. You deliver early and often … let the customer do the same. Don’t work for 3 months and then ask for a payment.
• Handle all possible exceptions in your code from the beginning. Make sure the error messages are clear and meaning full.
• Add logging to your system and let the system or the customer email you the log when there is a problem. Investigating a problem by using the customer’s description of the problem is a big mistake and will cost you a lot of precious time.
• Let the customer click ‘Install’ and let the program do everything else. It will be more work in the beginning but will be nothing compared to what you will need to do after your ‘step by step email on how to run the new script to update the database’.

I like how the internet changed how we do business. I can’t remember when last I wasted time in a meeting.

Also see my Software Development section on my website.