Project-Based Hiring - Waterfall

Lutfal and Champa and their team (Remote Programmer) in Kolkata have been working with me since 2003.

Andrew R. Taylor

I personally went to India to visit Lutfal and his team in 2007 to start off our project and they made me feel very welcome. I was impressed by their set-up and professionalism. I would highly recommend Remote Programmer to anyone.

Martin J Smith

We have used Remote Programmer for last 13 years (as on Jan 2020) and have always been impressed by the quality of the service they provide. We have a fairly complex website with more than 500 MySQL tables which requires a lot of work on an ongoing basis so we opted to use dedicated resources from them. It is a great value for money.

Martin Gibbons

https://www.peoplemaps.com/

From insightfulness to exquisiteness, RP proved to be an excellent partner on all aspects. Flexible work schemes, dedicated developers plus an advisory role indirectly.

Mohammed Moulay

We worked with Remote Programmer for several years and they provided great service.

Developers are reliable and supported by a flexible, capable and collaborative management team as needed.

Ian Gordon

Waterfall Hiring - Development using Waterfall Method

This is the traditional hiring model where the project is done using the waterfall project development model. The requirement of the entire project is defined first. Then accordingly budgeting, development plan, and actual development are done. Any change request beyond the project scope is not part of the original deal and should be planned separately at a separate cost.

This model has both pros and cons. Pros are, you can budget early or you can plan well.  Unless you change the scope of the project cost will not change. The timeline is likely not to deviate much unless you introduce new changes.  So you can plan in advance. The cons are many.  It works fine for projects that can be defined in advance. But in practice, this does not happen in most cases.

Highlights

Basic Contract

Project-based. We will give a fixed cost for a fixed set of detailed requirements provided. Additional changes beyond scope will be treated as separate deals.

Work  Place

RP Office at Kolkata, India

Development Team

Consists of both full-time and part-time resources as required.

Communication

Skype, Slack, Email, Phone, etc

Availability As per schedule
Techniques / Models Waterfall /CMMI
Project Management Tool Jira / A4W (Our own System) / Anything else you prefer
Billing Installment  (subject to milestones reached)
Advance to start As agreed

Key Benefits

  • You will enjoy control over the project budget unless you change the scope of the project
  • If the project  is properly defined it is likely to be completed within the time
  • Your ideas, developed codebase will be your own intellectual property.
  • A Scrum Master will be assigned to monitor his works and help him to sort out any problem related to set up, project management, technology, etc.
  • The team will be consisting of many shared experts and will be used on an SOS basis
  • We will provide you access to our Agile Product / Project / Test management tool - free  
  • You will enjoy lifetime use/edit/resell licenses for code originally written by us
  • We will ensure the right  code quality, right architecture, and the right processes
  • Long term support assurance - we have clients of  more than 12 years  
  • 100% ethical practices - zero risk that roots from dishonesty
  • You will benefit from years of  knowledgebase (since 1999)

When to Hire on Project Based Waterfall Method

We recommend project-based -waterfall hiring when

  1. You would like to have firm control over the budget and timeline
  2. You know what you have to develop. Features, sections, use cases, interfaces, and functional and nonfunctional logics
  3. You are confident that you do not want to introduce new features/ideas in the middle of the development process
  4. You do not want to be available during the development time on a daily basis to answers developers questions
  5. The project is not too big and likely to be completed in 2-3 months.
     

Why hire an Offshore Developer?

  1. Reduced Cost - If you are from a country where the cost of labor is significantly higher than in India, with us,  you are likely to get better developers at 1/5th (or even less) price.
  2. Reduced Headache - Running an in-house team does not only add 5 times but a lot of headaches too.  Here you will not have to bother about the recruitment, HR activities, operational processes, office management, hardware, and software, etc. You can simply concentrate on your project only. 
  3. Expert Overnight - It takes years to build an organizational knowledge base over the software development process for an organization. We are in the industry for over 20 years. The moment you choose us as your development partner you can claim that your team is backed up with 20 years of experience.  
  4. Ready Platform -  We will give you free access to our end-to-end software development cum agile team management platform. There you can see the full picture of the team activity or project development progress or software documentation required for future maintenance. 

Why not  Hire a Freelancer?

Freelancer hiring often looks lucrative. But you may have to spend a lot of time getting reliability from a freelancer because of some inherent problems. Here are those.

  1. Uncertain -   Most freelancer works fulltime somewhere and you do not know when he will be suddenly off to save his permanent job. You do not know when he/she will leave.  If you hire him/her even dedicated, there is every chance he will have to continue to support other clients. You do not know when he will get a better deal and leave you.
  2. Unsafe - Your codes, data privacy, and IP rights may not be in a safe hand.  There is a possibility that your code / IP rights are being re-used in other projects, particularly when a freelancer leaves.  You can never catch a freelancer.  An ethical company never does it who thinks long term. Employees working for a company do not dare to do it because of legal action.
  3. Limited Talent -  Software development is teamwork. Building a professional application that will provide value to its customers requires many experts. An architect, analyst, server admin, designer, developer, test analyst, etc. It is never possible to get someone with the skills required to play all these roles. So other than developer skill you will have to compromise. With a company like us, you can hire them on an SOS basis and pay only for limited hours. In fact, for the smaller issue, the help comes absolutely free.
  4. Dead End -  With a freelancer, your growth option is a dead end. Initially, you may start with something small a developer might be apparently sufficient for you, but soon your application may become bigger and more complex. You may need help from experts or new resources. A freelancer will pull you back.
  5. No Organisational Tracking - We have an organizational tracking system. We will do the activity tracking, work tracking on your behalf, and rectify in the background to yield greater output. If you hire a freelancer you might have to hire another manager (or spend a lot of time of yours) to track him.
  6. No Organisational Knowledbease - We are in web application development since 1999.  We have several people who are in the organization for more than 14 years. We know more than a freelancer what works and what does not work. You will lack it when you hire a freelancer.
  7. Knowledge Transfer Crisis - A developer may leave. Whether you hire from us or hire a freelancer.  And the worst situation normally comes when he/she leaves. When a freelancer leaves you to have to manage the knowledge transfer yourself. It may not be possible for you.  But we will easily manage it. The scrum master will have a high-level knowledge of the system.  Plus we have a standard documentation process to transfer it to a new developer.  

Project-Based-Waterfall Hiring  - How does it work?

  1. Initial Project Discussion  - We will discuss with you the primary product concept,   business objectives, similar businesses, opportunities, and threats. We will also discuss the possible solutions, possibilities, technologies, resource type required - and try to give a rough projection on time and cost.
  2. High-level requirement document - The next job is to create a high-level requirement document such that we can give you a high-level estimate to make the primary deal. This requirement document will consist of the functional requirements,  major nonfunctional requirements, a rough sketch of the proposed system, and associated documentation. We will help you with this.  
  3. MVP (Minimum Value Product) & Ballpark- It may take years to develop the system if every possible feature is developed. As per lean product management dynamics approx 80% of values lie in only 20% features. So developing the lesser valued features in the early stages is simply a waste. We have to choose the top 20% features, develop it, and launch early with 80% values. We will provide a ballpark estimate too.
  4. Low-level requirement document - The next job is to create a low-level requirement document such that we can give you the near-to-correct estimate to make the primary deal. This requirement document will explore all the use cases (user actions) in the proposed system, associated data, associated specifications, and other requirements that may affect the estimate. This will be done first for MVP, phase 2 development, and so on.
  5. Final estimate and development plan - We will simply propose tasks required to complete the above functionalities and then estimate the same. We will also try to estimate what type of resources will be required. We will provide the final quote accordingly.
  6. Finalize the deal and sign the deal  - The next job is to finalize a deal and agree on it. The deal will likely consider the final set of requirements, the change management processes, IP rights, cost aspects, and timeline. It will also consider billings, payments, development process, involvements on both sides to avoid project delay and quality.
  7. Pay the initial deposit - Just pay the first installment to get started with the development process. It can be as minimum as 15 days approx bill of teamwork.
  8. Create a Team and setup Project Management System - To build an application that we need a team. At a minimum, we will need a product owner, scrum master, a minimum of one developer, and shared resources like designers, testers, etc. The product owner’s job is likely to be played from your side whose primary job is to clarify requirements. We need to set up things in the project management software. We will also set up the tasks in the system.  
  9. Software Environmental Setup  - The scrum master with the developer will set up software environments/technology stacks required for your development. It will consist of the local environment, DEV  server at the cloud, deployment setup (GIT), etc.
  10. The Team Operation-  The development will be done based on the waterfall model. Here is the flow chart

    Problem  Definition  (already done)->System Analysis -> System Design -> Coding & Unit Testing -> Quality Control -> UAT testing & Fixing ->Delivery
  11. Launch - Launch the MVP once accepted
  12. Maintenance - Start doing business. Change the system as per users’ feedback.
  13. Next Phase development - Try to find out the next 20% of features that cover 80% of the rest values. Then develop it and launch it. If everything is fine in two phases we will be able to deliver 96% values by developing only 40% features.
  14. Billing & Payment  - Billing and payments will be as per schedule based on milestones

Team Management Workflow

We have an automated agile project management system (Agile24) to manage the team management processes. We will not mind using 3rd party software like Jira too if you prefer.

  1. Create a Team - The administrator of the project management software will do it for you. A team must have a product owner, a scrum master, and members. Members can be added or removed when necessary.
  2. Create a Product - The product owner creates a product that is to be built. The proposed system is considered to be a product. It will be there until the product is removed from the market. The product owner defines it in terms of features and stories (functionalities).
  3. Create  Projects - The scrum master creates one or more projects to build the proposed system when the project. One phased development can be considered a project too.
  4. Create Backlog - Once the product concept is built and the features to be developed in a particular project are decided,  the ScrumMaster and product owner jointly create the backlog of the tasks that project. All stories are converted as tasks. Apart from stories, there can be other tasks too - general tasks, test runs, test suites, test runs, defects, etc.
  5. Create Sprints - The ScrumMaster does a rough estimation of the full project and full development time is divided into manageable chunks with a fixed duration (say, two weeks or 1 month). Tasks are moved to sprints as per priority. Many tasks may not be moved will lie in the unscheduled backlog.
  6. Assign Tasks - Now the ScrumMaster assigns tasks to members considering the availability and capability of the developers / other resources.
  7. Sprint Meeting - A meeting is done to convey the sprint objective and decide the gameplan to complete the tasks of the sprint.
  8. Daily Scrum - There will be a fixed time when all members of the DEV team will meet together to discuss just 3 points. What was done yesterday? What is to be done today? What are the impediments that slow the development process? The work plan of the day is planned accordingly.
  9. Execute Tasks - The members execute their duty as planned. The product owner must be available to remove the impediments related to the requirements. Everyday a scheduled meeting with the product owner is recommended to avoid any sort of technical debt.
  10. Day end work entry -  Everyone makes work entry - what has been done today along with time to track hours to complete each task.
  11. Test, Review, and done - The initially done work is tested by the developer first and then reviewed by the product owners/scrum master. It may further undergo testing by testers as the situation demands. Once passed it is marked as passed.
  12. Sprint Retro Meeting- Everything cant goes well. In the sprint end, a blameless meeting is done to review what went wrong and what right. Then ScrumMaster takes action to repeats that went right and avoid that went wrong.
  13. Analyze Reports -  An automated delivery report for a specific duration available for the team/user/project to assess the ground reality.  Work reports are available for further analysis.  Estimate change reports are available to determine when and how a project is delayed.

How will it cost?

The cost will be calculated on the basis of the rates and estimates. Here are the base rates


Rate Chart:  Monthly Full Dedicated

Resource Type 

Experience

Monthly ($)

Web Developer 
(For  E-Com & Generic  Websites using PHP)
2-6 Yrs 1000 - 1500
Web Designer
( Photoshop, HTML & CSS)
4-8 Yrs 1000 - 1500
Backend API Developer 
(PHP/Node.js)
3-7 Yrs  1200-1500
Front End Web Developer
(React/Angular/Vue)
3-7 Yrs 1200-1500
Mobile App Developer
(React Native)
3-6 Yrs 1200-1500
Full-Stack Developer
(React + PHP/Node.js
5-10 Yrs 1200-1800

Note ** -  Cost will vary  with the technology, skill level, and order volume

Rate Chart:  Hourly Rates

Resource Type 

Approx Experience

Hourly ($)

Web Developer 
(For  E-Com & Generic  Websites using PHP)
2-6 Yrs 7-12
Web Designer
( Photoshop, HTML & CSS)
4-8 Yrs 9-12
Backend API Developer 
(PHP/Node.js)
3-7 Yrs  10-14
Front End Web Developer
(React/Angular/Vue)
3-7 Yrs 10-14
Mobile App Developer
(React Native)
3-6 Yrs 10-15
Full-Stack Developer
(React + PHP/Node.js
5-10 Yrs 12-15
Routine Tester 3-8 Yrs 10-14
Load & Security Tester 3-10 Yrs 10-14
Test Analyst 7-15 Yrs 12-15
System Architect 10-15 Yrs 15
Scrum Master 10-15 Yrs 15
Server Administrator 10-15 Yrs 15
Database Administrator 10-15 Yrs 15
Data Entry Operator 4-15 Yrs 4-7

Note ** -  Cost will vary  with the technology, skill level, and order volume