I want to hire a programmer to turn a web 2.0 website idea into reality. The trouble is that I don't know enough about programming to intelligently lay out what I need, create realistic milestones and check on the work. For example, back when I knew nothing about basic web design, I hired a firm over Elance to make me a website with a CMS. I ended up WAY overpaying for a sloppily designed website with a buggy custom made CMS. With what I know now, I would have been better off with Joomla at 1/3 of the cost. Anyway, I'm sure programming could easily go the same way...I'll only realize years later that my programmer went in the wrong direction and I wasted a lot of money... How do I avoid this? Should I hire a consultant to help me flesh out the idea in specific terms, come up with milestones, and then review the work as it's completed? If not, how does a non programmer hire a programmer without a serious risk of getting screwed? It seems that no matter what you do, as a non programmer, you have to take a leap of faith somewhere that the person you're talking to knows what he's talking about.
Either state it here and ask for clarification about key parts. Could even ask about rough pricing guidelines. People do it all the time to get a ballpark figure. I wouldn't hire a consultant just yet to set out milestones etc. If you rather not discuss it in public. Do it via PM. After you get an idea of cost etc and the consultant's fees, you could work out a realistic/probable time frame. But those deals are really dependent on the coder you hire. They may have a full schedule and can only work in a few hours the first week. Also, consulting could save you time if they know of pre existing scripts to speed up the process.
Yes there is a leap of faith but that exists weather you are a programmer or not and if your the employee or the employer. As a project manager of more years than I care to mention I would much rather deal with people that are not amateur programmers. The problem with people with some level of knowledge is that first of all you get pseudo technical requirements which dont actually describe what they want... it is like the classic going to the garage and telling the mechanic the tappit needs to be replaced but when you come to pick up the car and pay the $1000 bill the car is still making the same noise when the mechanic is challenged he just points out there was nothing wrong with the tappit but he did what you instructed. The second issue is that you make wrong assumptions.... look on here and you will see a lot of people ask for a PHP programmer for a new project, why? Why do they think that PHP is "better" for the job than JSP/ .Net/ CFM etc, most of them dont know but the most commonly quoted reason is that it is cheaper. We dont offer PHP programming any more but when we did PHP for development was about 20% more expensive than .Net and our hosting costs are identical. 1) Write the requirements in "business" terminology - ie when I press button A and email is sent to X 2) You dont set the milestones the developer/ project manager does. At most you can set the end date but then you are in risk of backward planning and so puts you on a downward path to start off with 3) How can you hire a consultant any easier than you can hire the developers? Talk to the people, look at their work and make sure it is their work and not someone elses they are claiming credit for 4) For price, if you post on Guru or equiv you will see what everyone bids to see what the going rate is (again make sure you give full requirements not just "I want a site like X"). Remember however that cheapest can be the most expensive in the long run
Finding one would be just as difficult, but at least if you hire a consultant and pay him for his for his advice, you don't have to worry about him cutting corners and bending the truth to reduce costs and complete the project on time.
Well a consultant could cut corners too. Think the real question is: is the amount of money potentially saved by hiring a consultant equal to or greater than the fee they charge? Or are you just looking for some safety net for dealing with a situation you aren't comfortable with?
I'm just talking about hiring a consultant to help lay out a plan to create the website...it would be all talk, recommending programming languages, milestones, etc. I don't understand why he would cut corners when he's not actually doing anything, just saying what he would do if he were the one working on it. And then once you get a plan from the consultant, then you hire someone else who's cheaper to do the labor. I don't know...maybe this is all a dumb idea...I just think this could go REALLY badly if I simply put up a bid on Elance, rentacoder, etc., because I would have no way of knowing whether the proposals are good.
See, he should be doing something. He should be doing exactly what you stated. Corners can be cut there as well. While it can be overworked too. Plus if you hire the consultant from the start, it would be wise to have him review the proposals. It seems to me you are making the assumption that the programmer could/would rip you off because he's producing the code. But the consultant, he's free of that since he's just giving advice. He can give bad advice which could be just as bad. Its not a dumb idea at all. Its a good question to ask. Isn't an easy answer for it though. You're on the right track, do your homework. Ask questions etc.
Cutting corners can be done by anyone and there can also be ulteria motives.... they may well get kick backs from certain development companies that use JSP and surprise surprise after reviewing your requirements he recommends that JSP is the best language to use. The other fairly common option is to pay a second company to review the code of your developers but again you have to be careful as ultimately there are many ways to achieve a goal and the second company can just do a bit of testing, see it works and so give it a clean bill of health when in reality it has massive security holes or will claim lots of things are wrong and then say you cannot trust your developers and so should pay them X to rewrite it. There has to be an element of trust on both sides in any project be it programming, manufacturing, service industry etc... you have to trust the service provider to be up to standard and not cut corners and they have to trust you to actually pay them for services rendered, be reasonable on timescales/ scope etc - on a 1 week deadlined project the employer cannot take 3 days to answer each question and expect the project to be delivered on time. A key bit often missed out is actually talk to the people (voice or text) and see if you can actually get on with them
1. Do some research,post in web design and development forums not to hire but asking for suggestions on what is the best way to go about developing your web project 2. Always hire freelance web developers from reputed freelance websites 3.Experience like this will also teach you.