This is going to be a long reply. Sorry about that.
# Full Disclosure
- I am part of an agency that helps companies like yours build products either for internal use or for their customers.
- We are partners for a couple of large enterprises, but most of our customers have between 50 to 300 employees.
# Experience
- We have worked with a company in a specific niche that was using a platform from a small provider.
- We ended up rebuilding their entire platform from scratch. Spoiler - it was not easy.
- I prefer being called a technology partner rather than an agency/vendor. Our clients' success is how we define our success.
# Thoughts
- Your own product will never be 100% complete - If you are someone who loves to optimize things and wants efficiency, then every single workflow or process can be optimized or even entirely removed. And, it is absolutely okay, as long as you are always in a better place than you are currently and are growing your revenue while reducing stress/manual overhead with every single update.
- The only way this works properly is if a senior team member from the agency is embedded as part of your team.
- Only work with companies/agencies/partners who come via a referral. Picking agencies from Clutch etc. is not the way to go. All those listings are always paid, even the ones which say they are not.
- This has been said before - When working with a tech partner, start with an extremely small but challenging project. Set clear milestones for them to hit and for you to be able to measure success.
- IMPORTANT - Define one product owner on your team who will be responsible for all decisions. This is a bigger deal than you would think. You have domain experts in your team, who can be consulted, but that product owner will be the primary decision maker.
- IN-HOUSE TALENT - Use the tech partner to help grow and train your team. They are in the industry to hire tech people and can find the right people for your team.
- DESIGN - Do not skimp on this. I am sure there are workflows and processes which have been present for a long time. People in your team are used to them. But this new phase gives you an opportunity to redefine/reevaluate everything. Delete. Redesign. Implement.
- Don't be a stickler for Agile vs Scrum vs any other new shiny methodology. Figure out the system that works best for you, your existing team, and your extended team. Yes, this takes time, but it is possible to agree on some things and then build from there.
- Communication - When working with an agency, working with a partner who has someone embedded allows you to bring them into all conversations early. The right partner will help you make better decisions. And this senior embedded person will be able to communicate and manage the extended team using off-the-shelf tools which you have visibility on. Example - Our core tools for communication include Slack, Airtable, and Figma.
- Long-term thinking - having the correct incentive structure for your tech partner allows them to make better decisions for the product and the business instead of thinking about getting done with one project and making a profit.
- Legal Contract - It does not always work, but it is important to have a good contract with timelines and SLAs for your work.
It's an awesome app. Saw this and thought that it should be on HN. Where are you based out of? Maybe we can catch up sometime and I can actually use the app in action :)
I moved from an Indian iTunes account to a US Account a few months ago, and I faced similar problems.
As soon as I migrated my account, I was happy too see that it was working fine. Little did I know that Apple does not transfer "Purchases" into the new account. When I called AppleCare, they told me that I will have to manually go through the history of apps I have bought from my account and download them in the US Store. I won't be charged for the apps but this is still going to be a manual process.
In their words, they do this primarily because some of the apps might not be available in the new location store. I mean, WTF?
The least that Apple has done is that I would still receive update notifications on my iOS devices.
Now, note this scenario that I use the same iTunes Account for my purchases in iTunes and also as my primary Apple Developer account.
The account originally being from India, I did not have access to the option of renewing my Dev account online. I moved on and never thought about this issue again.
Last week, it was time to renew my developer account, and I was happy that at least this time I won't have to fax my details to Apple and it will all be a smooth online payment.
NO. Not the case. My Developer account is still an Indian account as per Apple's records and I had to make the payment using fax.
I hope Apple comes up a solution soon, as the current thing just sucks
After I read the first part, I felt really good about the beginner. But after the sequel, I see that this is something which does happen in real life. It is just sad.
The terms lazy and hard-working are used loosely here. I definitely would hire a smart programmer that's not afraid of doing things the 'hard' way when the constraints of the project demand it, but a programmer that too easily falls into doing it the hard-way may not be considering alternatives that are more maintainable long-term, and I've seen enough people get burned out by marathons of working the hard way that some surveys of the technology and pilot projects before jumping in (or just having an experienced specialist on-board) would have saved lives and careers.
The point of this article is that some people are lazy in a different way. They aren't lazy because they aren't challenged. They just appear to be lazy because their hands aren't at the keyboard. They're actually the opposite of lazy because they are tackling the additional challenges of evaluating all of the possibilities and trying to find the most expressive and easiest maintained implementation.
Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for a quick and dirty hack session, and sometimes you just need to hard-code the stuff to get the first version out the door, but if you have the luxury of making it right the first time, go for it. Just don't forget to counter-point, "Perfect is the enemy of good".
# Full Disclosure
- I am part of an agency that helps companies like yours build products either for internal use or for their customers. - We are partners for a couple of large enterprises, but most of our customers have between 50 to 300 employees.
# Experience
- We have worked with a company in a specific niche that was using a platform from a small provider. - We ended up rebuilding their entire platform from scratch. Spoiler - it was not easy. - I prefer being called a technology partner rather than an agency/vendor. Our clients' success is how we define our success.
# Thoughts
- Your own product will never be 100% complete - If you are someone who loves to optimize things and wants efficiency, then every single workflow or process can be optimized or even entirely removed. And, it is absolutely okay, as long as you are always in a better place than you are currently and are growing your revenue while reducing stress/manual overhead with every single update.
- The only way this works properly is if a senior team member from the agency is embedded as part of your team.
- Only work with companies/agencies/partners who come via a referral. Picking agencies from Clutch etc. is not the way to go. All those listings are always paid, even the ones which say they are not.
- This has been said before - When working with a tech partner, start with an extremely small but challenging project. Set clear milestones for them to hit and for you to be able to measure success.
- IMPORTANT - Define one product owner on your team who will be responsible for all decisions. This is a bigger deal than you would think. You have domain experts in your team, who can be consulted, but that product owner will be the primary decision maker.
- IN-HOUSE TALENT - Use the tech partner to help grow and train your team. They are in the industry to hire tech people and can find the right people for your team.
- DESIGN - Do not skimp on this. I am sure there are workflows and processes which have been present for a long time. People in your team are used to them. But this new phase gives you an opportunity to redefine/reevaluate everything. Delete. Redesign. Implement.
- Don't be a stickler for Agile vs Scrum vs any other new shiny methodology. Figure out the system that works best for you, your existing team, and your extended team. Yes, this takes time, but it is possible to agree on some things and then build from there.
- Communication - When working with an agency, working with a partner who has someone embedded allows you to bring them into all conversations early. The right partner will help you make better decisions. And this senior embedded person will be able to communicate and manage the extended team using off-the-shelf tools which you have visibility on. Example - Our core tools for communication include Slack, Airtable, and Figma.
- Long-term thinking - having the correct incentive structure for your tech partner allows them to make better decisions for the product and the business instead of thinking about getting done with one project and making a profit.
- Legal Contract - It does not always work, but it is important to have a good contract with timelines and SLAs for your work.