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  • Book Overview & Buying Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers
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Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers

Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers

By : Leon Brown
Buy this Book
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Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers

Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers

By: Leon Brown
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (19 chapters)
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Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers
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Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers
Credits
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Credits
About the Author
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About the Author
Acknowledgements
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Acknowledgements
About the Reviewer
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About the Reviewer
Preface
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Preface
Lock Free Chapter
1
Introducing Freelancing
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Introducing Freelancing
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The freelance lifestyle
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Is freelancing for you?
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Defining your motivations
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Don't quit the day job
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Legal entities
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Home or away?
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Summary
2
Positioning Yourself in the Market
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Positioning Yourself in the Market
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Market segments
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Pricing yourself appropriately
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Building quality for market segments
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Market research
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Summary
3
Defining Your Business Model
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Defining Your Business Model
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Types of business model for software
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Software Development as a Service (SDaaS)
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Software as a Product (SaaP)
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Software as a Service (SaaS)
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Software Supporting a Service
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Business Model Canvas
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Components
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Canvas
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Problem tools
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Product life cycle
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Five Forces Analysis
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Seven Domains Assessment framework
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The McKinsey 7S framework
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Fitting everything together
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The business descriptions
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Comparison: McKinsey 7S framework
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Comparison – Business Model Canvas
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Comparison: conclusion
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Summary
4
Creating a Brand
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Creating a Brand
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A brief definition of what branding is and isn't
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Know your audience
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Identify perceptions required for objectives
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Specializing – becoming a domain expert
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Generalizing – targeting a wider audience
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Kick starting perceptions
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Who do they think you are?
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Summary
5
Networking, Marketing, and Sales
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Networking, Marketing, and Sales
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Understanding networking
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Defining a networking strategy
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Writing press releases
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Open project sources
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The sales process
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Summary
6
An Introduction to Client Types
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An Introduction to Client Types
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The ethical client
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The difficult client
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The trusting client
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The nasty client
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The price-conscious client
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Summary
7
Managing Clients
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Managing Clients
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Points of contact
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Performing risk assessment of the project
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Analyzing the client
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Cash flow issues
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Summary
8
Negotiation
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Negotiation
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The Winning Formula
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Strategic Negotiation Phases
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Summary
9
Software Development Resources, Patterns and Strategies
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Software Development Resources, Patterns and Strategies
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Software problems: A recap
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Rescued by object oriented programming
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Strategic efficiency with MVC
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Strategic data management
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API-oriented system architecture
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Testing strategy
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Security considerations
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Version control
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Summary
10
Software Development Methodology
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Software Development Methodology
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Social factors of software development
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Features for preventing problems
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Methodologies of interest
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Designing your methodology
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Summary
11
Creating Quotes and Estimates
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Creating Quotes and Estimates
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Maths to the rescue: The basics
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Risk management
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Recovering unaccounted costs
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Maintaining estimation accuracy
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Summary
12
Project Management
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Project Management
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Client perceptions
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Methods of communication
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Allocating the right people
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Written agreements
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Feature creep
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Risk assessment
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Defining a specification
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Feedback
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Release cycles
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Summary
1
Appendix
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Appendix
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Interview 2
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Interview 3
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Interview 4
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Interview 5
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Interview 6

Summary

Although using math's is more complicated than simply guessing a price for quotes and estimates, the extra effort produces a result that is more informed and therefore more likely to be accurate. This more informed result in turn reduces the risk of your projects resulting in lost profitability or even an outright loss—this being where your costs to deliver the project is more than the client is paying you.

The less complicated type of project can in general be estimated as a standard package price—e.g. a 5 page website with bespoke design and conversion to web code to be X hundred pounds, and then Y pounds for each additional page added. This is a reasonable way to approach projects that are low risk in terms of complexity and where you are competing in a price competitive market. Using a client rating based on your knowledge of previous dealings with the client, or of other clients who show similar characteristics to the client in question, allows you to adjust any simple estimates...

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83
Tech Concepts
36
Programming languages
73
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Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers
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