July 28, 2011 at 13:27Can anyone manage a project?
Good afternoon.
In this article I want to talk about a project that I’ve been working on for a year, share the experience gained during its implementation, as well as get critical feedback, tips and advice from the habro community.
The project is called bukabench- A resource that is designed to provide the ability to quickly and conveniently search, select and purchase the right books. The topic is not new, but I wanted to do everything honestly, since I did not find anything suitable for myself at that time. It should be said that after we spent the first money on creating the site (we are engaged in a project together), our developers showed us bookmix.ru, which almost completely possessed the same functionality that we had in mind. This was the first shock, the first mistake and the first lesson learned: always carefully analyze the market and competitors before starting the project. A banal lesson, isn't it? But by then the terms of reference had been written and approved, the money spent, and the desire to create something new high.
Our common experience in managing IT projects came down to writing terms of reference for finalizing and changing the management system of the company in which I worked at that time, and quit six months later (a friend is still working, providing financial support for our project). But we were both active users of the network and in our opinion had a taste and possessed all the qualities to create a truly cool book service. So we decided to take a chance, put an end to our financial careers and do something worthwhile.
A year later, we realized that these qualities were not enough and we did not have enough management skills, namely in project management. The site is being developed by the guys from the Perspektiva and Planeta-Web studios. This is the same company, but according to them, dividing it into two brands and two sites, you can increase the number of customers. The advantages of working with them were relatively low prices (this was critical for us) and the solution to all the tasks we put forward. The disadvantages include the inability to offer comprehensive turnkey solutions (we constantly had to double-check the fulfillment of the tasks facing them and refine them several times) and, like us, they had problems with project management, which resulted in unsatisfactory work with clients. This has led to repeated postponement of completion and poor communication: it was difficult to get through and generally communicate normally. But nevertheless, they coped with the work, proved to be trustworthy specialists (this is important in this business) and we hope that they will nevertheless be able to improve their work and become our full and reliable partners.
Our main mistake for the whole time was the desire to take into account all the little things and release a full, 100% ready-made product. This dragged on the general implementation deadlines, as it was necessary to throw from one trifle (an important trifle) to another (no less important), distracting developers from performing tasks related to the main functionality. The second mistake and the second lesson: try to quickly release ready-made versions of the product, supplementing it with new features with each new version. It’s also pretty banal, but even after the error was realized, it was very difficult to “work on the errors” and think over the release order of versions, so that in the end we get a single seamless product. Try it and you, it is much more complicated than it seems at first glance and is a good lesson in planning and project management.
Here is a list of what we have done during this time. We managed to create a worthy design - the heart of our product - that allows us to solve the main tasks facing our resource, namely to provide the ability to quickly and conveniently search, select and purchase the right books. A program was written to import books from the OZON.ru database, and to date, over 110 thousand have been added to more than 6.5 thousand authors and 450 publishing houses. A module was added to add prices to online stores. A module has also been implemented for posting book reviews and a quote module is on the way. So far, much is in limbo. From the main it is the issuance of personal recommendations (the algorithm is ready, it remains to do the software) and numerous edits on the design and overall work of the site.
In conclusion, I want to say that, despite all our misadventures and dissatisfaction (I console myself only with the fact that many "business gurus" attribute this quality to real leaders) with the achieved results and the current state of things, it turned out to be very cool to go beyond the everyday life surrounding you , take a chance, believe in yourself and follow the call of the heart, which, according to Stevie Jobs, "knows itself where it wants to be." The third and final lesson can be learned from this: believe in an idea that really excites you, and don't be afraid to follow it. Life is short and a second chance may no longer be presented.
And in the end I want to ask experienced Habr visitors to comment on a question that is important for many novice managers: how to achieve a quick and successful launch of a new product with limited resources? For comparison, you can take TeamLab - a platform for collaboration and project management, which over a year of existence has attracted about 100 thousand users from almost 200 countries. This example was not taken by chance, since with this resource we have a birthday on the same day, but the results are different. It would be interesting to hear their comments on this issue.
Good luck to everyone in the implementation of their own projects.
In this article I want to talk about a project that I’ve been working on for a year, share the experience gained during its implementation, as well as get critical feedback, tips and advice from the habro community.
The project is called bukabench- A resource that is designed to provide the ability to quickly and conveniently search, select and purchase the right books. The topic is not new, but I wanted to do everything honestly, since I did not find anything suitable for myself at that time. It should be said that after we spent the first money on creating the site (we are engaged in a project together), our developers showed us bookmix.ru, which almost completely possessed the same functionality that we had in mind. This was the first shock, the first mistake and the first lesson learned: always carefully analyze the market and competitors before starting the project. A banal lesson, isn't it? But by then the terms of reference had been written and approved, the money spent, and the desire to create something new high.
Our common experience in managing IT projects came down to writing terms of reference for finalizing and changing the management system of the company in which I worked at that time, and quit six months later (a friend is still working, providing financial support for our project). But we were both active users of the network and in our opinion had a taste and possessed all the qualities to create a truly cool book service. So we decided to take a chance, put an end to our financial careers and do something worthwhile.
A year later, we realized that these qualities were not enough and we did not have enough management skills, namely in project management. The site is being developed by the guys from the Perspektiva and Planeta-Web studios. This is the same company, but according to them, dividing it into two brands and two sites, you can increase the number of customers. The advantages of working with them were relatively low prices (this was critical for us) and the solution to all the tasks we put forward. The disadvantages include the inability to offer comprehensive turnkey solutions (we constantly had to double-check the fulfillment of the tasks facing them and refine them several times) and, like us, they had problems with project management, which resulted in unsatisfactory work with clients. This has led to repeated postponement of completion and poor communication: it was difficult to get through and generally communicate normally. But nevertheless, they coped with the work, proved to be trustworthy specialists (this is important in this business) and we hope that they will nevertheless be able to improve their work and become our full and reliable partners.
Our main mistake for the whole time was the desire to take into account all the little things and release a full, 100% ready-made product. This dragged on the general implementation deadlines, as it was necessary to throw from one trifle (an important trifle) to another (no less important), distracting developers from performing tasks related to the main functionality. The second mistake and the second lesson: try to quickly release ready-made versions of the product, supplementing it with new features with each new version. It’s also pretty banal, but even after the error was realized, it was very difficult to “work on the errors” and think over the release order of versions, so that in the end we get a single seamless product. Try it and you, it is much more complicated than it seems at first glance and is a good lesson in planning and project management.
Here is a list of what we have done during this time. We managed to create a worthy design - the heart of our product - that allows us to solve the main tasks facing our resource, namely to provide the ability to quickly and conveniently search, select and purchase the right books. A program was written to import books from the OZON.ru database, and to date, over 110 thousand have been added to more than 6.5 thousand authors and 450 publishing houses. A module was added to add prices to online stores. A module has also been implemented for posting book reviews and a quote module is on the way. So far, much is in limbo. From the main it is the issuance of personal recommendations (the algorithm is ready, it remains to do the software) and numerous edits on the design and overall work of the site.
In conclusion, I want to say that, despite all our misadventures and dissatisfaction (I console myself only with the fact that many "business gurus" attribute this quality to real leaders) with the achieved results and the current state of things, it turned out to be very cool to go beyond the everyday life surrounding you , take a chance, believe in yourself and follow the call of the heart, which, according to Stevie Jobs, "knows itself where it wants to be." The third and final lesson can be learned from this: believe in an idea that really excites you, and don't be afraid to follow it. Life is short and a second chance may no longer be presented.
And in the end I want to ask experienced Habr visitors to comment on a question that is important for many novice managers: how to achieve a quick and successful launch of a new product with limited resources? For comparison, you can take TeamLab - a platform for collaboration and project management, which over a year of existence has attracted about 100 thousand users from almost 200 countries. This example was not taken by chance, since with this resource we have a birthday on the same day, but the results are different. It would be interesting to hear their comments on this issue.
Good luck to everyone in the implementation of their own projects.