How to start a project

Dear Reader

I am writing this article on how JADER Ltd starts a project for a customer, for interest only and discussion.

We, like any other business, need projects to fund our existence. Our ethos at JADER Ltd, is to provide a solution, and then the monies follow the solution. We are intent on not being mercenaries, who work for the highest bidder on any funded project. We do not assume that our competitors are mercenaries, we assume they conduct business respectfully within the computer industry.

I shall run through in days how the project began. Please bear in mind I have 40 years coding experience at all levels and am one person fielding an ambitious project. Also, at the same time I wear many hats and have to field my other customers too.

1. Day 1. First client contact. Bidvine used to obtain a deal. Note: on average 8 to 10 bids on Bidvine attract 1 bid for work, cost Approximately £120.00. In the case of Project 1 we bid and got the work. Luck was in.
   1. Bidvine allows a company or individual to attract the potential customer with a bid for their project.
   2. The potential customer then responds yay, or nay regarding further contact. Or, does not respond at all.
   3. In the case of Project 1, we had multiple negotiations to refine, a contract which we both signed using Docusign.
2. Day 3. After Docusign event, we begin to write a spec document. This shall be a rolling spec and shall be frozen at the mid-point of the project. The spec document shall include version 2 requirements as well as version 1 requirements to enable a future strategy for development. This project was starting to look very healthy and mutually perpetual.
3. Day 5. We start to code as solution. JADER thought that C1 CMS could be used to host all the content for the dashboards and began to “shoehorn” code into C1 CMS in order to make the project work.
4. Day 8. After making some forward progress we decided that the backward progress that began to occur was not so good. After a certain amount of work, JADER Ltd decided to change to Core 2.0 ASP.NET in order to future proof and correct the backward progress in C1 CMS, regarding the dashboards. Note: C1 CMS is an excellent open source project and we decided to retain it for the main informational website, just not the dashboards.
5. Day 9. I started to learn about Core 2.0 ASP.NET. This was interesting. I managed to put the forward steps I developed with the awesome Telerik controls into the new dashboard project.
6. Day 12. After some time had passed we were back in the same place we had got to on Day 8, i.e. forwards. This is sometimes the way with starting a new project. Technology changes so fast that it is necessary to learn new techniques and, whilst not languages as such, later versions of the same technology that one is used to. I would like to say that my rate of learning seems to be increasing as I get older.
7. Day 15. Engrossed in Core 2.0 ASP.NET JADER Ltd is well on the way to producing a solution using various technologies, not all Microsoft, however essentially so. My Microsoft partnership allows for a lot of disparate use of technology, however, their tools for coding are expert and useable, and I make good use of them.

I am only including 15 days, as that I reckon, should be a cut of for chopping and changing any of the technologies or ways forward, which were originally thought of at inception. I think that some hard work at the beginning to rapid proof of concept should take place in order to ascertain the viability of the proposed solution.

We, at JADER Ltd put some serious hours in during this time, as some of the technology we had envisaged using needed to be retracted and restarted with another technology. In other words I put my time (quantifiable in money), where my mouth was. I needed to put another proof of concept forward. In the case of Core 2.0 ASP.NET, I had never really used that solution platform in any deep way, so for me it was a valuable process of learning which I can now take to other projects.

Yours sincerely,

David A Robertson

(JADER Ltd)