Software Development Is A Profession with Tom McFarlin – 076

Tom McFarlin is the founder of Pressware, which develops web apps with WordPress. He is also an open source software developer and an editor for Touch Code, an online technology magazine. Tom has been appointed a Microsoft Most Valued Professional 4 years in a row. He has a computer science degree from Georgia Tech.

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Solving Customer Problems

• What is the most important thing you can share about pricing?
  • Start by looking at what you need to live, thinking forward into retirement.
  • Over time, you want to scale upward, just like you would in a traditional career path.
  • When you are self-employed, you do not have an annual review.
  • You want your pricing to be commensurate with your skill set and experience.
  • Base your pricing on:
    • Planning for the future while you are growing
    • The skill set you have developed
    • The experience you bring to your customer
  • By communicating value (high or low), your price attracts a certain type of customer. Do you want this type of customer?
  • You want the customer to see you as an investment rather than a cost.

• How does a software developer create value for a customer?
  • Developers solve problems.
  • If you are just building things to scratch an itch, you are are a hobbyist.
  • Nobody wakes up and says: I want to pay someone to develop software today.
  • Developers need to work on solutions that matter because 50% of projects fail and 67% are over time and budget.
  • Several factors contribute to the failure rate.
  • The government said, “We will take care of healthcare.” Then the website did not work, perpetuating the industry stereotype.

• What is can a developer do to create more value for a customer?
  • Create tighter/smaller feedback loops to deliver projects on time.
  • Do not assume you understand the requirements for a project when you see them in writing.
  • The customer terminology might be very different from what you assume.
  • You need to work with the customer to see it from their perspective.
  • You should work iteratively on a feature/requirement, asking the customer to verify it works as expected.
  • If you wait until the end of the project, you will have a large number of things to refine.
  • Make sure you are building what the customer wants in a timely fashion.
  • You have to develop the solution with the user's eyes, not the developer's eyes.
  • It is the developer's responsibility to say when you should not do what the customer wants.

Standards Create More Value

• What is the value of coding standards for the developer and the customer?
  • Your source code is written in a predictable fashion.
  • It will look like a single developer wrote the code, regardless of the programmer.
  • There is less of a learning curve for the developer because it sets an expectation.
  • For the customer, coding standards save time and money.
  • When bringing in a new developer, he will be able to pick up the code more quickly.
  • Feature requests and bugs can be more quickly addressed, eliminating maintenance costs.
  • Ed Kless teaches the IT Smile Curve, where the ends of the curve (the problem to solve and ongoing support) are the most valuable.
  • Domain-driven design by Eric Evans looks at the problem from the user's perspective, rather than just writing code.
  • You usually find something that is simpler, once you begin solving the problem.
  • Software developers need to get better at asking questions to uncover to the simplest solution.
  • To improve software development, developers need margin to make mistakes and allow the customer to make mistakes.
  • Educating the customer on the process is part of the developer's responsibility.

• Should a developer provide a free estimate for a software project?
  • Your experience will make you comfortable charging for estimates.
  • If you analyze the solution before being paid, the customer has no skin in the game.
  • If you charge for the estimate, the customer has skin in the game to choose you as a partner.
  • You are setting a precedent for the type of business you want.
  • If you give away estimates, you are devaluing the analysis in the customer's eyes.
  • If you provide a free estimate, the customer can take your proposal to someone else, which is an integrity issue.

Value in the WordPress Economy

• What do you think about pricing in the WordPress ecosystem?
  • It is a race to the bottom right now.
  • Many of the products are cheap – both financially and technically.
  • Because of open source and the plug-and-play nature, you can call yourself a developer and charge $25/hour, devaluing what real developers do.
  • Good examples of sustainable businesses doing open source work:
    • Crowd Favorite
    • Rocket Genius, the business behind Gravity Forms
    • Pippins Plugins, creator of Easy Digital Downloads
  • Gravity Forms would risk a public outcry if the price were to increase.
  • The easiest way to increase a price is to add value, like with Hulu‘s non-commercial option.

• What is the relationship between the WordPress Bill of Rights and the WordPress economy?
  • WordPress is General Public License (GPL), which provides a handful of benefits to the community, where a user:
    • Can run the program for any purpose
    • Can change how it works
    • Can redistribute it
    • Can modify and distribute it to others
  • Some try to obfuscate their source code, which raises an ethical question.
  • From a positive standpoint, there is a wide variety of libraries and tools to help build solutions.
  • You can explore APIs–figure out how they work and tie into them.
  • You stand on the shoulders of giants since you can see the source code.
  • You can create a sustainable business because customers want access to support.

• What is one of your best stories about creating value for a customer?
  • The educational content that Tom has provided through source code, blog posts, screencasting, and speaking have created the most value.
  • He has had contacts from all over the world who request consulting, because of his desire to educate.
  • A thank-you email from a fan is valuable to him.

About Tom McFarlin

• Website: tommcfarlin.com
• Twitter: @tommcfarlin