{"id":14970,"date":"2015-11-19T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/?p=14970"},"modified":"2015-11-19T07:49:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T12:49:35","slug":"advice-on-a-side-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/advice-on-a-side-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice On a Side Project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode, I give an advice on a side project.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dnB--Qrbmqs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>[blank_space height=&#8217;3em&#8217;]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Full transcript:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>John<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, John Sonmez from <a href=\"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\">simpleprogrammer.com<\/a>. I got this question. It\u2019s kind of a long email, so again, I\u2019m going to summarize this here. It\u2019s from Florian and he\u2019s from Belgium which by the way, I got to visit Belgium and saw Bruges or Bruges I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s Bruges or Bruges. I could never figure that out, but anyway, it\u2019s like a fairytale city. It\u2019s pretty cool city. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen anything like that.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, so Florian basically has this question and he said, \u201cHow\u2019s life? Is the Europe trip going well?\u201d I\u2019m back now, but it was, it was fantastic. He says he\u2019s a young software developer from Belgium. He read my book Soft Skills and watches my YouTube channel closely and he discovered my website from PluralSight courses.<\/p>\n<p>He wants to know about side projects here. He basically says that he gave up on his side project. He was working with a colleague and they were working on this\u2014an app around David Allen\u2019s GTD philosophy which is Getting Things Done. You can check it out. I\u2019ll put a link to the book. A really good book, a really good kind of process for managing your work and your life but that\u2019s beside the point.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, he says he was working on the web app. They\u2019ve been working on it for 1-1\/2 years. They had no prototype at the end of that. They spent way too much time on anything. He said he didn\u2019t even have a social life, wasted a lot of time, real overkill of meetings and he said the idea wasn\u2019t bad. Which I agree, it\u2019s probably not a bad idea. He wanted to know about the approach of a personal side project.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a bunch of questions here: \u201cWould you first create a full backlog with all features in it? Thinking things through, what happens if you delete (A) those kinds of things, like if you delete feature A. Perhaps not the Agile way, but I want to know what the workload is for MVP Minimal Viable Product. I\u2019m using Visual Studio online to organize this. I want to have a bunch of metrics of progress achieved by charts.\u201d He goes on to say, \u201cNext, I want to create a full HTML mockup of the application to real show what the application does, all dummy data\u201d and goes on and on talking about frameworks and all this stuff and should I write Unit Test and thinking about database design and web APIs and Build Server and using Jenkins.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s my advice. You can probably see where I\u2019m going with this is is basically don\u2019t do that. You spent 1-1\/2 years trying to create this product and you didn\u2019t even have a prototype out. That\u2019s the total wrong approach. All these questions you\u2019re asking me these are not the questions that you need to be asking me, not at this point in time. These are the questions that someone working for a multimillion dollar organization with a team of 80 developers needs to be asked. Those are serious questions for that, but for 2 guys trying to figure out if an idea is going to work, working on it part time, don\u2019t do all that. Instead what you need to do is try to create the simplest possible version of the product that you can put out and get it out there as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t want to keep on hitting on the MVP Minimum Viable Product buzz word but it\u2019s a true thing. You need to do that. Don\u2019t even worry about how the code is organized. What you want to do is you want to fail fast if you\u2019re going to fail. If you succeed you want to learn quickly and consider whatever you\u2019re writing or creating right now. The version will be a throwaway. That\u2019s my best advice. Get your idea out there and get it tested and get feedback as soon as possible and then you can do things right later.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I\u2019ve learned being an entrepreneur is when I first started my software development career I was all about doing things right all the time. What I\u2019ve learned is that that\u2019s fine when you\u2019re working with someone else\u2019s money, but when you\u2019re working with your own money sometimes you got to do things quick and dirty because it\u2019s just not profitable, it doesn\u2019t make sense. When you\u2019re burning up someone else\u2019s money you can sit back and you can ponder all the intricacies of the architecture and should we use this unit testing framework or that one. That\u2019s fine because someone else is paying you to do it, but when it\u2019s your money and it\u2019s your time your attitude kind of changes.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t mean to just like, you know, to throw out all craftsmanship and do a crappy job but it means that you\u2019re going to make tradeoffs and the biggest tradeoff that you have to make is getting something out there quickly and start to get income from it.<\/p>\n<p>The best way to test a thing is ask someone to pay for it. What I would suggest if you do another side project or if you restart this one is get\u2014set a deadline. Let\u2019s say you start this project now, in 2 months you have V1 shipping that is your deadline. You must do that in 2 months. You\u2019re not giving yourself anymore time than that. In 2 months you\u2019re shipping something and you\u2019re going to collect money for that thing. Put it out there. See if people will pay for it.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you don\u2019t have the full thing built out, if you say what you\u2019re going to build and it\u2019s a good idea people will give you money for it. If no one will give you money for it, it\u2019s a bad idea, it\u2019s not going to work, don\u2019t waste another year and a half building something that no one is going to pay for. It doesn\u2019t matter how good your architecture is and how much you plan this out and how much you have your ____[inaudible 00:05:36] charts and you got your metrics and all this stuff if no one ever actually buys it and if it never gets built all that is going to be totally wasted effort. Don\u2019t waste time doing things that are going to be complete throwaway if you never ship. Instead, focus most of your effort on shipping and then you can add those other things later once you start making money, once it\u2019s actually viable then you know you\u2019re not wasting your time.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like if it took you a year and a half and you never got to a prototype you probably wasted a whole lot of time worrying about things that are not actually important. It\u2019s a good lesson though. I don\u2019t mean to like totally harp on you. You got to learn this lesson, but that\u2019s my advice on the situation. Hopefully your next project you can get it shipped very quickly. That gives you also\u2014think about it, in a year a half you could have tried out 5 or 6 ideas and hopefully one of them would have worked instead of focusing on building just one and then you don\u2019t even get it done. You give up because, hey, who has the endurance to work on a thing for 1-1\/2 years without actually getting any money for it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, great question and if you have a question for me, just email me at <a href=\"mailto:john@simpleprogrammer.com\">john@simpleprogrammer.com<\/a>. I\u2019d love to answer one of your questions in a video format. If you like these videos, if you like this podcast, subscribe. Talk to you next time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode, I give an advice on a side project. [blank_space height=&#8217;3em&#8217;] Full transcript: John:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com. I got this question. It\u2019s kind of a long email, so again, I\u2019m going to summarize this here. It\u2019s from Florian and he\u2019s from Belgium which by the way, I got to visit Belgium&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[162229169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-youtube"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Advice On a Side Project - Simple Programmer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this episode, I give an advice on a side project.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/advice-on-a-side-project\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Advice On a Side Project - 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