Hello Fernando,

Tough thing to implement. What you're talking about would be sort of starting a consulting enterprise. If you decide to do that then you put yourself directly in competition with those businesses already established for many years.

I believe that even if you name is a "developer's network" in fact it's still a consulting enterprise.

If you really want to start this did you figure out the following:

How many available developers will be needed to do a good job?

You'll have to be sure that many developers are available for each development language. Which development languages are important?

Who will be in charge of each project overall?

A developer did a project for an enterprise. That enterprise needs modifications to their software. The original developer is not available because of whatever reasons. You'll have to assign somebody else to go there. Are you sure there will always be someone available? You don't really have a choice because if you can't provide help to that enterprise then they'll go elsewhere and perhaps never come back.

And so many other things to consider...

With my interrogations I don't mean to send you bad waves. To me this venture seems like something a lot more complex than what I just mentioned. I'm sure that I just touched the tip of the iceberg.


>Each day it gets more dificult to a sole guy or even a small (two to three people) software company to get fairly good contracts. Even more if you are a VFP developer, in which case many companies don't want their systems developed with this tool (the tool is not the point here).
>
>Even small companies (customers) want systems that require different developer skills to develop it, and that are hard to find in just one person, mainly when they want to go internet.
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>The problem is: sometimes you face a project where you (or your small company) don't have all the skills necessary to get it, and you loose the contract.
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>Last week I've been talking to two fellow developers to arrange a way to group different skilled people, each one keeping their own independency, with their own companies etc, but whenever there is a project requiring people with different skills we could form a team and try to get the contract.
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>People told me this is what is been called a developers network. I found it a very good idea, and would like to have as much information about this as possible, to see the good and bad points, how this arrangement should be presented to the customer, if there should be a project leader, if there should be only one contract or one to each team member, how it should be handled when mantainance should be done etc.
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>Searched the internet about this subject and didn't get anything usable. If somebody could help me in this subject, pointing where I could find information, arcticles, white papers, people already working in this fashion that could exchange experience, posting ideas and pitfalls about it, I would be very grateful, and think many other fellows facing the same problem, I am, would to.
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>By the way which is the correct form to reference a network made up by developers?
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>
• Developer Network
  >
• Developers Network
  >
• Developer's Network
  >
• Developers' Network
  >

>Thanks.
>
>Fernando