I have been thinking about my own company for a long time as most people know if they read my blog.
So for a change, I have created a case study of how I want to profile myself and what kind of customers I want, and how I would handle everything.
This includes all the software I would use and things I have learned along the way at all my employers.
How would I profile myself
This would be mainly as a developer for my own functionality, however, I would like to partner up with another guy I know for the designs as that is his strong suit and not mine.
What are the customers I want
My most ideal customer would be the one in a higher segment, not the biggest fishes but a little lower than them. Who would like to have custom development on a Laravel site or shop.
What requirements do I have for the customers
I will require every customer to have its own hosting package with SiteGround as it supports WP-CLI and SSH as this will aid me with deployment. Also, a staging environment is required, as I have seen it a lot of times go wrong that no staging was available.
What software would I use
This software will be used almost instantly so that a correct continued development is done.
- Laravel: As I would only do Laravel services
- Lavalite: As every project needs a intuitive backend interface
- GitHub: Project management, Git, Issues, and deployment via Deployer
- Invoice Ninja: invoicing and offers
- OhDear: Application status and health possibly via custom plugin
- Gmail: For email and online meetings
- PHPStorm: For development
- Cypress: For automated testing
- LastPass: For as long as I work alone
Long term software used
As well as a short-term software list a long-term list is needed.
- Flare: For error registration in the applications in real-time.
- Slack: For internal communication and internal notifications
- 1Password: Whenever a colleague comes in.
- ChiefOnboarding: For onboarding people in the company with some custom work so everything will get into place.
Investing and financials
Next to all this software, there is an investment to be made for all this software, and also money is to be made so this also needs to be defined.
The investment for the first month will consist out of the following:
- CoC registration: €50,-
- OhDear: €10,-
- PHPStorm: €10,-
- GitHub: €7,-
Long Term:
- Flare: €30,-
- Slack: €35,-
- PHPStorm: €100,-
- Insurances: €350,-
Income and wages
For the salary for the employee, I will create a list later on as this isn't relevant for the upcoming year.
For the income, I will request €95,- per hour. Every project will be calculated and a couple of extra posts will be created like testing and project management.
How will process management look like
At any given time I will not handle more than 2 or 3 projects at a time, this is to keep the deadlines tight and to ensure that each customer gets enough attention for their projects.
For development we will use sprints, this is based on a system found at my current employer. A sprint will consist out of 4 weeks from which 3 weeks of development and another week for internal testing and customer acceptance.
In the first week, the sprint refinement for the upcoming sprint will be done so any questions will be asked in that week.
Per week 1 day will be for tickets (otherwise normal development will continue) one day will be kept clear for overflow if there is a little too much work.
All design work will be sent to my partner.
Information management
We will have a wiki that is based on MkDocs and built in GitHub pages and also released on GitHub pages.
Project information will be placed in the Wiki of the project itself and updated there. As for other documentation like functional and technical designs, there must be links to google drive. Until a better place is found.
So this is my case study so far and it might even become a business plan in the future, but for that, a little more thoughts need to be given as to how I will get the clients and how to engage them.
I will see you again soon!
