In April, I asked my friend when the balance of the first installment would be settled. He told me: the project is now suspended, it may be after May Day, and I will contact you then. So far, he hasn’t contacted me, and I certainly haven’t sought him out. I think I had a miscarriage, and looking back on what happened, I don’t really want to do it anymore.
Last September, my friend, who is also the leader of the first company I graduated from, came to me to consult about the development of some official accounts and so on. They are doing hardware embedded, the company does not have this talent. Then came the idea of collaboration. At that time because plan New Year to decorate bridal chamber, want to bring pen money to go back, promise can chat. After chatting, I found that the project is not good, there are many things, both toC and toB. There is a public small program background to achieve and their equipment communication. In the end, I got two friends together and started the project.
The requirements gathering lasted for two weeks, and in order to demonstrate our professionalism, I taught myself axure. Gave them a set of prototype, I think is still relatively cowhide, can be in our company dry products -. Then there was a lot of discussion about the prototype, and we got started. Before the construction, the other party is more satisfied with a sum of money for us to have confidence, that time full of energy. We divided the work, one partner is responsible for the front end, another partner to get through wechat, I am responsible for communication and equipment, first do toC. Background functions are easy to say.
This piece of equipment communication I think, with netty to build a server, parse TCP packets. Well, it’s all right, but… I haven’t touched Netty T T before. I bought two books and thought to study them first (personally, paper books are the most efficient in learning). There’s no rush. Two days after the book was bought and read, there was a phone call, saying that their leaders were bragging to the customer that things were soon developed, and asked us how the progress was. I was speechless at that time, but after thinking that the project was really lazy after it started, I decided to set a deadline for myself and accepted. Within two weeks, we completed the entire ordering process and the interaction with the equipment, and successfully carried out the customer demonstration. I don’t want to look back on how I spent those two weeks. I only remember that I went to bed at dawn every day and then went to work after a short nap. Fortunately, their company and my docking buddy were more helpful. And by mid-December, we were almost done with all the modules, all CRUD stuff with no technical problems, but it felt like we were writing more code in a day than in a week at the company.
As the project neared delivery, they suddenly proposed a change in the background rights management area, either adding features or completely changing the scheme. This will affect our calculation and statistics of some data. Changes are also involved between modules. All of this is because their company is wrong in gathering requirements. Everything is checked and rechecked before construction starts, and every module is checked and rechecked before development. These efforts were greeted with the words, “HMM… We’re not very professional.” I negotiated with them to change the demand and pay for the hours worked, and they agreed. Of course, I never got the money. In fact, after this happened, I don’t really want to work with them. It’s not that I don’t have a spirit of contract (actually no contracts are all verbal) but I think we have cognitive biases that make it difficult to work together. The first is professional, not professional can, but you want to speak rules. It’s mostly communication. It’s so hard. The second is the lack of product control ability, what the customer says is what. One day he sees this on the market and wants this, the next day he wants that. Customer requirements are always respectful, dare not refute dare not make suggestions. I have told them many times that I think this model is unhealthy, that party B should not have a say, that you are a partnership, not a slave relationship. I also added a lot of things to me, and helped him solve all of them without affecting the development progress. Although HE was reluctant to do so, he always brushed my face every time.
During the period, they gave me a sum of money, in order to appease the partner mood, I gave them equally, thinking that it is ok anyway sooner or later is mine. In mid-January, the project finally went online. Before the New Year, I hope they can settle the balance and have a good year together. This time, the money was not forthcoming. I went back to my hometown, met and talked with my friends, he gave me a sum of money in the name of private, in fact, at that time had guessed the outcome, probably yellow. I didn’t want my partner to take the risk for me, so I divided the money between them, ahead of the year, and fortunately I didn’t disappoint them. In fact, after this, I understand a lot of things. Think of that money as tuition. This time, I played the roles of project, product and development at the same time in this project. Now I really think that project manager and product manager are really important. Don’t think they are useless and don’t know anything without you. I don’t know if you can do it. I don’t expect them to call me and reassure me that the project is going on, and I don’t expect them to ask me for my hard-earned money because there’s no point. Let him go. It’s good.