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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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

Know your audience

Knowing who you are aiming to sell to is the most important question to know the answer to, not just because you need to know what they want to buy, but because the answer to this question dictates how the answers to your other branding questions are formed.

Software development is a difficult service to sell if the client doesn't know what they want or need because it's not easy for them to see the relationship between what software does and the benefits provided. Knowing about your audience gives you some advantage in the sense that it allows you to identify what benefits to focus on when you talk about what you offer. Even more so, specializing your software development in one sector or for one purpose allows you to better understand how you can benefit your target market and to be more specific in describing those benefits when you are speaking to people.

If you intend to become a generalist freelancer, you will have different types of client who buy different types...

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