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

By : Leon Brown

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

By: Leon Brown

Overview of this book

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

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

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

About the Reviewer

About the Reviewer

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

Introducing Freelancing

Introducing Freelancing

The freelance lifestyle

Is freelancing for you?

Defining your motivations

Don't quit the day job

Legal entities

Home or away?

Summary

Positioning Yourself in the Market

Positioning Yourself in the Market

Market segments

Pricing yourself appropriately

Building quality for market segments

Market research

Summary

Defining Your Business Model

Defining Your Business Model

Types of business model for software

Software Development as a Service (SDaaS)

Software as a Product (SaaP)

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software Supporting a Service

Business Model Canvas

Components

Canvas

Problem tools

Product life cycle

Five Forces Analysis

Seven Domains Assessment framework

The McKinsey 7S framework

Fitting everything together

The business descriptions

Comparison: McKinsey 7S framework

Comparison – Business Model Canvas

Comparison: conclusion

Summary

Creating a Brand

Creating a Brand

A brief definition of what branding is and isn't

Know your audience

Identify perceptions required for objectives

Specializing – becoming a domain expert

Generalizing – targeting a wider audience

Kick starting perceptions

Who do they think you are?

Summary

Networking, Marketing, and Sales

Networking, Marketing, and Sales

Understanding networking

Defining a networking strategy

Writing press releases

Open project sources

The sales process

Summary

An Introduction to Client Types

An Introduction to Client Types

The ethical client

The difficult client

The trusting client

The nasty client

The price-conscious client

Summary

Managing Clients

Managing Clients

Points of contact

Performing risk assessment of the project

Analyzing the client

Cash flow issues

Summary

Negotiation

Negotiation

The Winning Formula

Strategic Negotiation Phases

Summary

Software Development Resources, Patterns and Strategies

Software Development Resources, Patterns and Strategies

Software problems: A recap

Rescued by object oriented programming

Strategic efficiency with MVC

Strategic data management

API-oriented system architecture

Testing strategy

Security considerations

Version control

Summary

Software Development Methodology

Software Development Methodology

Social factors of software development

Features for preventing problems

Methodologies of interest

Designing your methodology

Summary

Creating Quotes and Estimates

Creating Quotes and Estimates

Maths to the rescue: The basics

Risk management

Recovering unaccounted costs

Maintaining estimation accuracy

Summary

Project Management

Project Management

Client perceptions

Methods of communication

Allocating the right people

Written agreements

Feature creep

Risk assessment

Defining a specification

Feedback

Release cycles

Summary

Appendix

Appendix

Interview 2

Interview 3

Interview 4

Interview 5

Interview 6

Open project sources

The easier way of finding work is to use sources where prospective clients make their work requirements publicly known for people like yourself to bid for. On one hand, this provides a big advantage of being much easier and cheaper for you to find the work. On the other hand, the nature of the project being open for any number of people to bid for means that you will be up against a lot of competition. The key to succeeding with open projects is a mixture of applying for them in quantity, being selective in the projects you apply for and sending tailored proposals that meet the needs of the project owner.

Project sources

There are many sources to find details of projects requiring your skills. The following are descriptions of the main types you are likely to come across:

Project bidding websites: These are websites that allow any type of business to publish their work requirements and anyone to bid for them. Unfortunately, you will often find yourself competing against...

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83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

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