Welcome!

[guitarclap]

I need your input! Please, I know this looks lengthy but if you have a free 5-7 minutes, I would be very appreciative!

I have been a software developer for about 7 years now mainly working with middle tier web applications in PHP and now moving over to ASP.NET. I have recently become frustrated by the increasing volume of work my employer is expecting of me; my job has evolved into the role of R&D, IT guy, project manager, database administrator, front end developer, backend developer and web designer (all without a pay increase).

I’ve become my companies “jack of all (web) trades”

So, I asked my boss to hire more people to help take some of my day-to-day tasks. In short, we ended up going through about 5 guys in a matter of weeks – 3 semi-questionable guys from oDesk and 2 personal “friends” of my boss who I knew had no real skills (weekend coding warriors).

The Pitch

Create a website/service that is based around a community of well-qualified professionals that work only within their strongest skill set. The process of selecting professionals will be rigorous and requires a solid track record of quality work. The community will vote on which prospects to bring onto the team, which ones will become project managers, team leaders, etc.

This will not be some lame directory for web professionals or a freelance job posting site! It will be a fully functional “company” made up of professionals who self-regulate and communicate how to effectively (and profitably) run the site.

This will NOT require a full-time investment from members. If we can get a strong group of professionals, we can give projects/tasks to those that are available. Members will be able to select tasks that have a dollar value assigned to them. Once selected, they will have a certain amount of time to complete the task or the task is re-assigned to another member. When completed (and approved by the project manager) the money for the task is deposited into the member account.

ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY!

Design
$50 - Create a basic logo and 3 banners.
$25 - Add a standards-compliant dropdown navigation menu using jQuery.

Backend
$35 - Add ability for members to vote on a specific product
$30 - Add ability for members to comment on a specific product.

Frontend
$50 - Design GUI for comment and rating system
$50 - Research and develop SEO strategy (keywords, etc)
$75 - Translate strings to SPANISH
$75 - Translate strings to FRENCH

Testing
$20 - Test site in browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, FF, Chrome, etc)

The concept is this; whether you have a few hours free or need work for 2 weeks you can work at your own pace. Pick the tasks you want on the projects you want. No long-term contract is required and all interaction with the client is left for the project manager.
Imagine a project with 100 tasks, to which we have a pool of 25 good developers. How fast do you think we accomplish completing a site of each of those 25 members work at the same time?

Thoughts?

[TT_Mark]

You've got an interesting idea there. I'm assuming the $ values will be a percentage of what the client is paying for the website. I have to say that the main problem you will face is the different coding practices of your 'team' so this would need a stringent set of rules to follow to ensure others can then work on your code without problems.

I am actually very interested, I code PHP, XHTML and CSS but don't design

[guitarclap]

The $$ values of each task will most likely be related to the time and effort required to complete the task. Since the # of tasks will change from project to project, assessing that say "Logo design = 3% of budget" will be hard. Maybe a Project Manager can post the tasks that go into a short "review" period where team members can suggest changes;

Project Manager posts "Logo Design - $25" someone might go ahead and say...

"In the client notes it says they might use the logo for print. If this is the case, we should probably go vector for the logo so it scales without distortion. This will take more time, therefore the amount should go up to $75"

You are 100% correct about the coding practices of team members, especially when it comes to something like backend coding (PHP). Frontend, GUI and design can all filter off a set of web standards that will be more easy to follow. The details of this can be hashed out among the community prior to accepting any projects.

A few ideas;

- Allow team members to bring in clients. They will receive a % of the project budget for introducing the client to the team.

- Team members will all work under the name of the site so they appear professional and should be able to attract more clients. Each team member will have their own dedicated email address, web presence, bio, etc.

- We can push for reusable components. A dropdown/standards compliant horizontal menu should only have to be created once. We can pay the developer(s) of this component more money for the initial version, then a royalty for each time we use the component in a project. They would be responsible for updating the component, bug fixes, etc.

- If we have a large enough list of components that share the same same coding standards we can offer them up for sale. Like the dropdown menu above, we can have a "store" on the site where people can purchase it for $5 to which the developer(s) will receive a high % of.

- We should be able to accept all kinds of projects from simple design work, scripting all the way up too complete web development projects.

[crinkle]

Overall, the idea of having a pool of great people to contribute to a project is a good one. It can be really hard to find awesome designers and developers to outsource to.

My thoughts:

What happens when one component of a project is not done at all? Does the project manager allocate tasks to resources, or wait for coders/designers to choose the parts they want to work on? If no one makes themselves available for a particular part of the project, is the whole project delayed?

Does a % of each project go towards the overall maintenance of the company itself? Is there a core group of people who are actually managing the business itself, as opposed to doing development work? Administering the site, sending invoices, following up late payments, etc.? How do these guys get paid?

[guitarclap]

crinkle, thanks for you input!

First, I foresee the appropriation of the budget to be similar to (illustrative only);

80% - Developers
15% - Company Fee (Hosting, Advertising, Business Expenses, etc)
5% - Finders Fee paid to team member who refers the client to us (if the site generates the client on its own via SEO or advertising, it will likely be given to the Developers pool)

Project Managers can be compensated either as an overall % of the budget OR a % of how much they can bring the project under budget (their cut = (budget - cost to develop) * %). The Project Managers will have one of the hardest job since it's their responsibility to communicate with both the client and the developers and be able to effectively manage projects.

There will need to be a great deal of accountability with team members. If you accept a task and not complete it, there will be repercussions. As a community, we should have the right to select who gets to be a part of the team (voting in of new members) and moreover, vote to "fire" those members who are not meeting out expectations.

I don't want people to think the primary goal of this is for the "company" to make the money and the developers to be the work horses. The primary goal is for a core team of developers to work together to quickly and efficiently do projects. We can all make money separately on our own, but working towards a common objective will yield all of us greater earnings.

Team Member Structure

Owners - These people are responsible for the day-to-day tasks of keeping the site up and team members accountable, paying team members, advertising, etc. I will probably take this role in the early stages. But, I love to develop software, not manage a company

Project Managers - These people are either elected by team members or chosen when new projects is accepted. They are responsible for delivering the entire project to the client.

Developers - The core team of people who work within their strongest field. They select which tasks to do from a list of them that Project managers assign.

Voting

The community will vote on which people get to be team members. Each new applicant will go through a basic interview, post their time/hours they can work, portfolio, etc and the rest of the team members vote on whether to accept the person or not. Of course, in the early stages this will be less democratic, but the idea is that the community (team members) select who comes on.

There are a LOT of details to hash out. Right now, I'm trying to figure out if this concept could even work. Please, share this post with other people who might be interesting in sharing their ideas!

[lovelylj]

I've had an idea like this before, but I wouldn't know how to implement it. And I'm not that great of a designer (I do ok). It would take a lot of work.

But I've said all of that to say it's a great idea.