Redgum Technologies

Redgum have sent a team to Sydney for the Microsoft BizSpark Startup Camp.

Teams spend the first day learning about Microsofts Azure cloud platform, then spend the weekend implemeting an app of their own design making it run on the Azure platform.

The Redgum team of Dan (@DanTheOther), Matt (@twitoramarama) and Lucas (@LucasS) have just finished their first day of training in all things Azure.

You can follow the event on them on twitter at #sbsca

You have a great idea, you are assembling the team to execute it. So how do you qualify where the share and ownership goes? Well there are no hard and fast rules about this but here are the guidelines we set out for ourselves and others we are working with.

We have seen a lot of companies startup over the years, many with no real agreement or base line "in writing" to come back to ... so what are the basics to consider?

So you have a great new idea, you have a bunch of friends, work mates or have found someone who looks like they fit in.

So what can go wrong?

Most disciplines have a description of this principal.

• Graphic designers say less is more ... build up a concept then start taking elements away until it no longer conveys the intent.
• Science has Occam's razor, "the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one" OR "What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more"
• In software we have the single responsibility principal which as each building block of a system should only try to do 1 thing at once.

Basically they all come down to Keep it simple ... but why should you? Isn't it cheaper and faster to get 1 thing to do more? I could just fit one more thing in here …

When you are thinking about how plan and allocate your development and IT spend, sit down with your IT manager and work through which one of the following buckets each request falls into. This will let you compare actual progress forward against the planned progress. We call these accounts Ball of Bandaids, Lipstick on a pig, Save Me Money and Make Me Money.

After sending a PDF copy of our return on investment calculator to a client they have taken it to heart and put a list large list on the wall outside their office showing all 20+ suppliers they could integrate with and getting each staff member to write down how many hours per week they think they would save if the integration went ahead.

This showed they will save between 1/2 an hour and 5 hours per person per DAY, with the average sitting around 1-2 hours each across 10-15 people … that means that 2 people are freed up every week to focus on providing higher value back to the business, this is a massive saving that pays for the integration effort in a matter of 2-3 months.

I have just stumbled upon a great way to help your idea get over the first hurdle, crowdfunding.

There are a huge group of sites already doing this, each has their own "area" from fashion to software to art-house movies.

I just went to see a prospect to discuss developing something specific for them, we hadn’t been talking long when I realised all they really needed to start with was either a shared outlook calendar or a Google spreadsheet that they share between everyone. So I told them how to use each and where to find some more information.

They asked so can you help us and I said “No, not really, its not what we do and you don’t really need to pay anyone for this” and I got up to go.

The meeting then changed perceptibly, they relaxed, realised that I wasn’t just a sales person, qualified that I was both a techie and the business owner and then they started really listening to what it was Redgum did and then realised … actually there is this system over here written in MS Access that is causing us all sorts of problems and the developer moved overseas a few months ago … I left with several assurances that they would be calling us back in to take over maintenance and extend their existing system.

I wasn’t expecting that to happen, I would have been happy if they simply passed my card onto someone who I might have been able to help.

have you had similar experiences as the client or seller?

It is a picture of what will be there to give you an idea of what could be and to help you communicate the concept and make early decisions BEFORE committing to the real thing.

Over the years we have provided "mockups" and "prototypes" to our clients, these have been quite realistic look and even act like they work.
This has led to the misunderstanding that we have almost finished the final development, not merely qualified that we are heading in the right direction.

For a good understanding of our full process and where prototyping fits in have a look at our Bluepritning process.