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Application Development

Zenify

First time to this part of Boards. I'm looking to get an app developed and wanted to ask for some advice first.

I will need an app with similar capabilities as Hailo (and a few more). Right now I am just looking to get a trial version up and running and then I will hopefully get funding to develop it properly.

I have been advised to hire students and get them to do it on the side but do you think they would have the skills to do it? I would much prefer better quality over cost.

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refusetolose

that'll cost thousands if you want it done properly

Zenify

refusetolose wrote: »

that'll cost thousands if you want it done properly

i was hoping for the trial version to cost under 50k. What would be the best way to find the right people?

Get it done by a company or hire someone on the side? would a team be better than someone solo?

refusetolose

not someone on the side if your really serious about it

Zenify

I am thinking about hiring someone that is a friend of a friend. I am worried about going to someone I don't know as I don't trust them.

What is the usual route for people getting apps developed?

Yourself isit

I'm pretty sure that halio spent ten times that on Dev. And still have a team.

The most important thing about the hailo app (actually there are two apps) is how it scales to work flawlessly for tens of thousands of interactions an hour, or more. That takes proper engineering effort, both backend and front end and you will need it for at least two platforms. And a website. You will also need to worry about security payments and fulfillment. No doubt hailo have a reliability team monitoring their networks and uptime etc.

And testing is really difficult until you go live.

Then you have to get taxi cabs to use it.

Trying to take on twitter or instagram would be easier.

Zenify

Yourself isit wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that halio spent ten times that on Dev. And still have a team.

And testing is really difficult until you go live.

Then you have to get taxi cabs to use it.

Trying to take on twitter or instagram would be easier.

Thanks for your advice.

As I mentioned already I am just trying to get a trial version for under 50k. This will be lunched to the Irish market. If successful it will then be investor ready to get funding and develop the app for world market and I expect to spend a heck of a lot more than 10 times 50k.

It is not a taxi app at all. It will be a completely different concept. This app is not available on the market at the moment so I will not be taking on any competition.

My questions are

1. Should I get one or two developers? (I like the idea of two to combine skills)
2. Do I need someone with a lot of experience or would a very good student be ok?
3. What is the usual route/ do people usually go to companies for this?

Thanks if anyone can answer any of my three questions.

dazberry

Yourself isit wrote: »

The most important thing about the hailo app (actually there are two apps) is how it scales to work flawlessly for tens of thousands of interactions an hour, or more. That takes proper engineering effort, both backend and front end and you will need it for at least two platforms. And a website. You will also need to worry about security payments and fulfillment. No doubt hailo have a reliability team monitoring their networks and uptime etc.

While this is all valid, and I can't speak for Hailo specifically, a lot of the highly scale-able systems out there didn't start out that way, and anecdotally one of the things that seems to kill startups are those that burn time/resources/money trying to engineer solutions that are far ahead of their immediate needs.

Zenify wrote: »

Thanks for your advice.
1. Should I get one or two developers? (I like the idea of two to combine skills)
2. Do I need someone with a lot of experience or would a very good student be ok?
3. What is the usual route/ do people usually go to companies for this?

1. With an average contract rate of 400p/d, at 50k (ex VAT) that would give you a total of 125 developer days, roughly 25 weeks. Dividing that by 2 developers means that that averages 12 weeks but remember that the critical path may be longer as you may need to put together infrastructural bits say on the backend or need extra designs on the front end which may not overlap in PM terms.

1a. Figure aside, getting a single person with the complete skill set may be difficult - you're crossing a number of skills boundaries between mobile, backend and cloud and possibly web. There are solutions that overlap, mobile + web + javascript across the fullstack - might be good enough at this point.

2. It's always a difficult call to make, paying a student half as much means you could have them for twice as long, it maybe a false economy, could be a win, really depends on the student.

3. I've seen the mobile end outsourced when the skills weren't (initially) in house - and actually worked on one of those codebases for a while - not great but it got them over the line initially. In this case the backend was developed inhouse.

4. The biggest thing that will burn your 50k is not being 100% on what you want now, leave as little open to interpretation and as the system develops (and you get more ideas) don't be adding features - just aim for the line - get the money and then redevelop.

D.

Zenify

Thank you so much dazberry. This is exactly what I was looking for.

I have told a few friends the idea and to get onto developers and see if they are interested. people are literally getting back to me today as we speak.

luckily a lot of them want % so hopefully I can get a lot of hours then for my small budget.

Enterprise Ireland also have a funding competition on at the moment so I have a business plan done and I'll send it into them too which may help too.

Zenify

one more thing.

I was thinking of just getting the android app up first and do the ios after trial with funding.

Do you agree with that?

dazberry

Zenify wrote: »

one more thing.

I was thinking of just getting the android app up first and do the ios after trial with funding.

Do you agree with that?

Yeah I would just concentrate on one if it gets the idea across. If the mobile guys end up using something like react native or xamarin it may make porting easier down the line, but I wouldn't even be worrying about that at this stage.

D.

Yourself isit

dazberry wrote: »

While this is all valid, and I can't speak for Hailo specifically, a lot of the highly scale-able systems out there didn't start out that way, and anecdotally one of the things that seems to kill startups are those that burn time/resources/money trying to engineer solutions that are far ahead of their immediate needs.

Well he says like hailo but not a taxi app. That is hard to process. Is the only thing in common with hailo is that it is an app?

I'm assuming instead that what it has in common with hailo is that it has to match customers to providers in real time and therefore has to scale up pretty quickly and reliably. A twitter fail whale is not the same as a failure to book a cab or for the cab to not get a customer, or for the payments to fail. That app is not going to be used again. Also he needs two apps if it's the hailo model. One on the app store, one an enterprise app.

The actual testing of hailo (where they ironed this out) would have been the most important part.

To put it another way if someone was looking to copy twitter it would be a lot easier.

4. The biggest thing that will burn your 50k is not being 100% on what you want now, leave as little open to interpretation and as the system develops (and you get more ideas) don't be adding features - just aim for the line - get the money and then redevelop.

Agree but I don't see anybody even mentioning even wire frames yet.

Suff

Hi dazberry,

Having gone thought the same journey, I would advice/ suggest the following:

1- Prepare the business logic and all the user cases (based on interaction with your potential customers - if possible), as these will play a vital part in designing the application's architecture, and identify future functions and security issues.
2- Having a software architect on board is vital, as they can help plan the scalability in phases, no point having expensive server and infrastructure bills early on the project. Grow with the user bases, having the right scalability plan is extremely important.
3- Following from the previous point, a system admin person is also important as they can assist in configuring and running the backend (part-time job).
4- Plan the technical work with the team, keeping a realistic delivery schedule, even a prototype requires time to deliver.
5- Don't use a native developers (Android/ iOS), check ReactNative this approach eliminates the need to manage two/ three separate codes and resources. Facebook, Instagram are among the many that uses this mode. I had trouble finding good iOS developers at reasonable cost, so I've moved on.

Hope this helps

dazberry

Suff wrote: »

Hi dazberry,

Having gone thought the same journey, I would advice/ suggest the following:

[snip]

5- Don't use a native developers (Android/ iOS), check ReactNative this approach eliminates the need to manage two/ three separate codes and resources. Facebook, Instagram are among the many that uses this mode. I had trouble finding good iOS developers at reasonable cost, so I've moved on.

Hope this helps

Hi Suff, it's Zenify that's going down this well worn road, not myself - but good advice none the less.

In relation to React it seems to be the hot ticket at the moment, we have React developers in here (mostly SPAs - one mobile project is kicking off now) and they don't come cheap either.

D.

Atomic Pineapple

dazberry wrote: »

In relation to React it seems to be the hot ticket at the moment, we have React developers in here (mostly SPAs - one mobile project is kicking off now) and they don't come cheap either.

To add to this the React motto is learn once, write every-where. Meaning you have one skill set but should still develop separate projects for the different platforms.

jester77

React Native is not going to magically be one solution for all platforms. If you are looking to hire just one react native developer for both ios and android, then that developer will need to know how the components are written in the android and ios sdk's and will need to know both java and objective c. Plus react native is very unstable and it's view abstraction is not done correctly. And best of luck dealing with performance and caching, otherwise you end up with a mess like what Facebook have. If you can get someone that good, then you might was well pay for a separate android and ios developer.

If you are looking for just 1 developer, then a better approach would be to look for someone with kotlin and swift experience. The languages are very very similar and a developer can easily move between them and you won't have to deal with issues that something like react native would bring up.