IT Business Start Up Guide
Posted by Larry
on January 25, 2012
2 comments
IT Business Start up Guide
By Larry Battle
The following are 10 simple steps that you can take to successfully turn your idea into a marketable product or service. This guide is more geared to software startups.
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Create a Business Plan & Product Document
Construct a product or service that solves a problem.
Verify with others that the product or service is marketable.
Or find at least 3 potential customers willing to buy your product or service.
Note that you need to involve at least one customer throughout the entire start up process.
Process: Develop a document that describes the following information.- Your product or service
- Audience / Marketplace
- Competition
- Schedule with deadlines
- Financial Projections
- Startup cost
- Business Plan (How are you going to make money?)
- Market and Sells Strategy
- Limitations
- Team Members
- Exit Plan
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Create a Requirements Document
Define what your product or service does, what it come with and how you’re going to make the customer happy.
Process: Develop a document that contains the following information.- Product Name
- Deliverables (what is it you’re making)
- Customer Requirements (What are the customer wants)
- Functional Requirements (What are the functionalities)
- Environment / System Requirements (What will this work with)
- External components
- Diagrams for Overview, Software and /or hardware
- Hardware components
- Limitations
- Assumptions
- Team Roles
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Create a Architecture Document
This documents converts the requirement/product/services into simple abstract layers.
Process: Develop a document that contains the following information.- Programming Language / Framework / Software Used
- Layers
- Customer Requirements to Layers Matrix
- Diagrams of Layers and Data Flow
- Simple Data flow
- Use Cases
- Simple GUI Mock-up
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Create a Detailed Design Document
This document will discuss the sub-layers within the layers and define data-flow between them.
Process: Develop a document that contains the following information.- Layers
- Sub-layers
- Diagrams of Layers, sub-layers and Data Flow
- Data Flow Definitions
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Create a Test Plan Document
Create Test cases.
Process: Develop a document that contains the following information.- System Test Plan
- Integration Test Plan
- Unit Tests Plan
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Develop a working prototype of your Product or Service
Develop a prototype of the working system.
I prefer to use test driven development (TDD).
TDD steps are to Write a test case, watch it fail, program it to pass, re-factor. -
Convert your product from beta to a final product / service
Work with beta testers and customers to improve your product / service to a final working product or service.
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Perform System Verification
Check to see if the system works and have fulfilled all the requirements. -
Get ready for release
Create the following items- Product/Service Packaging
- License and warranty
- Support information
- Company website release page
- Demo setup
- Payment System
- User guide and other documentation
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Release and start marketing
Release to the public, market the product/service and rake in the cash.
You can do stuff like …- Video Demonstrations
- Buy Ads
- Press Release
- Attention getting stunts
Done.
Code of the Day: Sentence Scrambler
Posted by Larry
on January 4, 2012
No comments
Task:
There was a study going out a few years ago that said people can read words that are scrambled if the first and last character are left in place. So to help me practice Test Driven Development, I decided program it.
Example:
Correct: “Create attractive offers to reach the right customers”
Scrambled: “Cterae aacrtvitte offres to recah the rghit couemtrss”
For more information about the study visit: Cambridge Word Scramble Study: It’s Fake Already!
Code:
/** * @author: Larry Battle * @date: January 2, 2012 * @purpose: Scrambler - to scramble the alphabetical letters in word in such a way to make it still readable and understandable. * @note: This can be accomplished by have perversing the word order but mixing up every letter in the word except for the first. */ var scrambler = { scrambleStr : function( str ){ if( typeof str !== 'string' ){ return -1; } return str.replace( /[^\s]*/g, function( word ){ return word ? scrambler.scrambleWord( word ) : word; }); }, scrambleWord : function( str ){ if( typeof str !== 'string' ){ return str; } str = str.replace( /[a-z]*/ig, function( str2 ){ if( str2 && str2.length > 2 ){ str2 = str2.charAt(0) + scrambler.randomizeStr( str2.substring( 1, str2.length - 1 ) ) + str2.charAt( str2.length - 1 ); } return str2; }); return str; }, randomizeStr : function( str ){ if( typeof str !== 'string' ){ return str; } return scrambler.makeArrayRandom( str.split( '' ) ).join( '' ); }, makeArrayRandom : function( arr ){ var j, x, i = arr.length; while( i ){ j = parseInt(Math.random() * i, 10); x = arr[--i]; arr[i] = arr[j]; arr[j] = x; } return arr; } };
Input:
var str = "I can't believe what I'm reading." scrambler.scrambleStr( str );
Output: (Possible outcome)
"I can't beilvee waht I'm rndiaeg."
Try it out for yourself.
Demo: Scrambler
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