Back when I was working as an Tech consultant I was faced with a very basic problem - we were running out of time, budget was fixed and scope could not be reduced (on the contrary, "enhancements" were being added). I was new to the industry and I was not sure how to handle this scenario.
Thats when my then manager pulled me in and gave me the "gyaan" of four wheels.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="279" caption="Four Wheels"][/caption]
If you turn any single wheel, say scope and don't wish to change the budget or the timeline, the quality will suffer ... I applied this to numerous projects, mostly to allow "customers" to increase the scope and convincing them to pay extra for it. The objective was always to keep the customer happy, if the customer is willing to pay - hey lets add on the scope and deliver it by adding more people or extending the timeline if required. In reality, it was the "Quality" that used to suffer.
Last night, I was reading "Getting Real" - talks about the similar problem - but with a different approach - Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope
As a startup you are always constrained with time and money - so in a way they are already fixed, you can never never compromise on the quality and since you own the scope - cut it down - just keep only what is relevant - the core of your startup. Based on user feedback keep adding stuff later. So Less is More and Smaller Scope is the way to go
If you try to run your startup with the "job" mindset (More is More $$ and Smaller is Less $$) sooner or later you will end up in troubled waters!
This change in mindset is very critical to startup's success.
There is enough material on the web that talks about why Django / Rails is better than the other, I liked this comparison the most.
For me the key differentiators were the following two:
Documentation - Django tutorial followed with the detailed documentation available at their site is simply amazing!!
Development Effort - The admin screens completely sold Django to me. It saved me lot of initial effort to design, develop and test screens for models!
The other things that I considered:
Learning Curve - Lots of tutorials available for both Python and Ruby, I personally feel if you have a good command on any programming language - picking either one of them is a piece of cake, at least to get started with
Support / Forum activity - Looked like Ruby fairs better on this one - both have a good presence
Performance - Although Python has an edge, but the difference was not that critical for my application (being a B2B)
Integration with third party apps - Python has the edge over Ruby on this one ... although if you just compare the number of plugins available for each framework - Rails faired better
Clearly my objective was to pick up the framework that would do most of my work and had enough help / docs available to sail me through with little effort. As of now, with some bandwidth, I am thinking of picking up Rails and writing an application that would display the search results powered by Solr. Will do this development in parallel to Django and do a more thorough comparison!
Listed below are some of the tools that I personally feel are very critical for small business / startups at least in the early stages. If you have used similar tools in the past, or are aware of better tools that can get the same job done - do drop me a line
Email / Collaboration tool - Google App: Almost all of us have some part of google in our daily online routine, Google App takes a step further where one can quickly get the google mail, google docs, google sites, google calendar and google chat configured for your own domain. They have a standard edition (free of cost) which pretty much fits in for the need of a startup or a small business.
Where I feel it really helped us:
Email - hassle free, zero maintenance required from our side. There are bunch of clients available for desktops and now they even support integration with MS Outlook. You can take it on your blackberrys, other smart phones etc - works well! You can also define distribution lists / email groups and give them appropriate access - so you really don't miss MS Exchange much. (Note: I do backup all my emails on my laptop via Apple Mail, for Windows once can use Thunderbird)
Google Docs - with the addition of folders, bulk upload and ability to add any file - it is an online repository where we store our SOPs, Manuals, Guides, Trackers, Instructions, handouts etc for the team. Setting permissions on folders help keep restricted areas to certain groups / individuals ... and with the offline access enabled, I don't have to worry about network outages etc (Note: I avoid keeping confidential information on Google docs, one needs to define the boundaries)
Sites - I am using this as our internal intranet, any new releases / updates to the application are published to the site and everybody gets notified. Common tasks / activities are also published to the sites or the Google Docs are linked via the site ... very easy to keep everybody informed
Chat - you can chat with people on your domain and aslo add other gamil folks outside of your domain to your friend list. Can be a security issue, but for a small business / startup - this is a good to have.
Invoicing - Zoho: Any services account need to have professional invoices, this is where Zoho comes in. They have a great collaboration tool that competes with Google, but I am sticking only to invoices for now. Their free plans gets me started very quickly and as I grow, will pick up their basic plan that is very reasonable and takes care of all my needs. I can track my invoices / payments, send reminders, turn them off, modify the templates etc etc - complete self control - never had any issue! They recently launched expense tracker, that will ease tracking expenses for me
RWW had done an article on Online invoicing resources, Zoho was not in the top 4. I am still sticking with Zoho, because of their support for multiple currencies, pricing and simple reporting / tracking options. I feel Zoho is more apt for an international / global client while the others were geared more towards North America
Payments - Paypal: For small payments, it works very well. Easy to setup and configure, can be easily integrated with Zoho. I just find their exchange rates / transaction fee on the higher side when compared to a direct wire transfer (but then it saves you the hassle of handling multiple wire transfer accounts). When compared to other online payments, Google Checkout or Amazon etc - they seem to be the most flexible and accepted
Conferencing - SabseBolo: Looking for telephone conference bridge in India- this is the place, they provide local numbers across all major cities in India, cross city chats can help you save money. Easy and simple to get started, works well. For free accounts they play an ad, bit irritating - don't mind it for the cost!
They do have services like fax to mail, which are again very helpful. I wish their pricing was transaction based instead of a flat fee per month. For a small business / startup I do not expect many faxes and I had rather pay slightly extra price for one fax instead of flat fee
MockingBird - share mockups of the website, quick, easy and free!