1.  “I need a simple iPhone app done…”

A lot of iPhone job posts at Odesk, Elance, RentACoder start like this.  This is somewhat similar to the typical “I need a simple shopping cart solution” post we often see in the web development section.  It might be interesting for you to know that when your ad starts like this there is a very high chance that it will be disregarded by developers or their sales teams that check the website.  This is because developers in most cases find the requirements for something stated to be simple as oftentimes being actually very complex software: with bells and whistles, using GPS location, chat, camera, social networking functionality and a website to support the server functionality.  All of this is just assumed to appear out of the blue built by the same developer.

Typically, there are no specification documents and the job poster has a general, unfinished idea of  what he/ she thinks is a “killer app” and they want the developer to do the rest of thinking. It is also common in such cases that the author did little or no research into what is possible with iPhone SDK and after a discussion it may well turn out that implementing such functionality is impossible at all (except for jailbroken devices) so it turns out to have been a waste of time to even sign all the confidential agreements and begin discussion at the end of the day.

So in such case one may understand the frustration of a developer reading such posts. Therefore, a bit of advice here – while it is good to let developers know that you are not a dollar printing machine and you value your money and know what is difficult and what’s not, it is better to demonstrate this by having a professional approach in making your job specifications properly.

So to summarize the most important steps are:

1. Think your idea over.
2. Do some market research.
3. Write the specs. Create mock-ups and use cases where applicable.(you may find useful our guide on writing use cases and also an Adobe Photoshop PSD file for making iPhone interface mockups)

2. Post broadly

There are a lot of great developers who just stick to one website such as Elance or Guru.com. So if you post to Craigslist or Odesk only, you might lose a chance to find the best coder/ company just because they won’t see your message. Some developers check these desks themselves, some have special sales people. Sales people are often working as a freelance force finding projects for multiple groups of developers – taking a percentage of the contract price in exchange. So in some casing posting broadly means you have a better chance to reach your developer directly and therefore save some money.

Pick those who you think might be eligible and do a better selection process on them.  Check their portfolios, talk to them, ask if they’ve done something
similar. Find out from the communication what’s their English level, what are the times they are available online, if they are responsible people. Might be a good idea to Google them.

4. Ask for a development plan

After you have your professional looking outlined specs, you have a right to expect the same courtesy from developers.  It is the developer’s responsibility to study your specs, think the technical details over and create the development plan which may include hourly breakdown for each task or, alternatively, your project might be broken down into milestones describing features to be implemented with each iteration of the development. Such plan is a must to be able to track project development progress and it can also be a convenient way to organize payments upon successful completion of each milestone.

Injoit.com

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So I’ll just lay out the harsh reality: if you have zero programming background and little more than a vague outline of what you want to do the odds are you will have little luck finding a good developer, let alone making a decent iPhone application without spending way too much money and time.  My advice if you want to execute your idea efficiently would be to first:

1. Think through what it is that you want to create – sounds obvious but I don’t mean in a half-ass way, I mean really walk through the usage scenarios and create mock-ups of what you want to create. I know this is painful if you don’t come from a programming or engineering background but it is a must do if you want to be taken seriously by developers.
2. Create full specifications of what you need – write down every single thing that you think you will need to be created. Developers are just developers, especially the ones you can afford, and if they could resolve the unknown design problems with your idea then why would they need you?  See a great post by Joel Spolsky on why specs are so important.
3. Think about how much time, money, effort you are willing to put in to the project – odds are your project won’t be done in 1 week, so you need to make sure it is an idea you are comfortable working on and marketing once it is developed.  Basically, whatever time frame you think is possible, double it.
4. Learn what the iPhone SDK can and can’t do – this makes it much easier to know what to ask for and it also helps avoid your getting screwed by inexperienced or dishonest developers

Once you have spent the time to go through these steps you need to decide if you are looking for local or offshore developers.  Offshore will be cheaper but the additional time it takes to create very thorough specs and communicate what you need is significant.  The budget question is an important one because odds are you will not find a developer partner who will work for equity alone.  See my post on finding the right developer here.  Most important steps I followed before pulling the trigger on the idea were:

1. Check the App Store thoroughly for precedents or competitors to your idea
2. Check whether there are any companies or games that replicate your product on the web (for example in the flash games world)
3. Think about pricing and what you would need to break even.  If you are creating a niche product that will move 20-30 units a day odds are it does not pay to outsource development
4. Think of a narrative for your product.  Gimmicks have been done and they give you very little to work with.  You need to think about why bloggers, journalists and users would care about your 1 app out of 30k+ in the App store.

Bottom line is if you spend the time to walk through all of the design and planning yourself and can be bothered to learn the basics of the SDK you will be in a good position to know how to spot talented developers either in the U.S. or abroad.  The best way to get developers to respect and want to work with you is to be precise and exact with your idea and your specs from the get go.  Developers are getting inquiries from dozens of “next big thing” idea people so show that you have thought through your project enough and they will choose to work with you over their other options.  That’s right, finding the right developers is just as much about you convincing them as them convincing you, especially when it comes to iPhone app development.

Update: Just found a great article about developing an iPhone app from scratch here.  Includes some good resource links at the end of the article.  Also see Joel Spolsky’s blog for great project manager tips for when you do decide to begin your app development.

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Basecamp screenshot

The team put all of our milestones into the system so now I can go to Basecamp, review the list of upcoming milestones and leave files and comments that I think are useful for the team.   Once you upload or insert a new comment you have the option of notifying specific group members which is great because it avoids spamming those people who are not relevant to the update.

I think this software is really a brilliant way to manage a geographically separated group of people where transparency can obviously be difficult and it is hard to get clarity around what each person is doing.  I seriously recommend Basecamp for anyone collaborating on not just software development, but anything that could require getting a group of people on to the same page.

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