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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
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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

The difficult client

This type of client comes in many guises, but ultimately will cause you problems in one way or another. It's often better to not take on work from the more extreme of this type of client, but in most cases you will not have the luxury of knowing how difficult a client can be until you have started working with them.

Characteristics

Difficult clients will show at least one of a number of characteristics that you can learn to identify before you agree to engage in any work for them. These characteristics include:

  • Lacks a basic understanding of technicalities of the service you provide: This isn't a definitive indication of a client who can be a handful to manage, but its's certainly a red flag that should raise your suspicion—especially when combined with one of the other warning signs. A client who doesn't understand the basics of the technicalities of the service you offer is much more likely to demand solutions that are not realistically achievable either on a technical...

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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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