I had an idea for a software application and hired a programmer from one of the freelance programming websites. Towards the end he bailed. I even gave him extra money because the project ran over the time he said it would take. I ended up with useless software. He had excellent reviews, and was established on the freelance website

I know what I want the software to do but it seems I almost need to know programming to convey it or a wireframe or something. I had written down what I wanted it to do. But even the basic function ended up broken

Along the way as problems presented themselves i had to brainstorm solutions for the problems. As an example there could be two things named the same thing, this caused the software to crash. I would have thought the programmer would have already thought of this being a potential problem based on how I explained it would function. He then fixed it but in my mind this should have been a non issue from the get go.

So in essence my question is how do I explain what I want and should a programmer be asking me any questions ? Or do I have to have everything spelled out even if I am not a programmer because its seemed like I need to know programming to explain how I want the software to function. And where / how do I find a good one ?

  • vhanda@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    With any product you have 2 parallel streams going on -

    1. Product Development
    2. Customer Development

    Product Development doesn’t just involve “building it”, there is also tons of UI / UX work, and the most important job of a Product Owner of figuring out what features to prioritize and what is the go to market strategy.

    Then there is Customer Development, where you actively talk to customers to figure out their pain points and try to deeply understand the problem, and how you could potentially solve it.

    There is also marketing and sales, which is related to Customer Development but is it’s own thing.

    The idea is that everyone contributes to all these parts of the company, while the technical founder manages how to build it, and with what quality requirements. But the other founders are involved in every other part of the company.