Your project published a few releases and a small developer team is forming. You’re still doing the communication and web site maintenance. Time for real development is becoming smaller and smaller. Are you doing it right?

Delegate!

When you have started the project alone and created the first versions on your own, then you might think of it as your baby. It’s not easy to give up responsibility for certain areas. But the amount of administrative work will grow with the project. Try to find areas that you can delegate like Website maintenance, forum moderation or things like that. After a while when you know the other developers better, then you’ll find it easier to assign other tasks to them too. Just practice a little bit. ;-) To summarize this:  Try to delegate even important tasks to capable trustworthy members to free up time for important things.

“Activate” non-programmers

After a while your project might form a small community of users. They often communicate via forums, mailinglists, IRC or something like that. Then you’ll have the chance to convince some of the users to help you, even if they are not programmers. Regular users that feel connected to the project, sometimes like to help as well. Try to leverage that enthusiasm and ask if they’d like to help. They may help you for example by:

• by doing official support in the forums/irc
• help with improving the usability
• helping with the Website “maintenance”
• being the “community manager”
• design for the homepage, the UI or a logo/”corporate design”
• PR work/booth duties at conferences like LinuxTag, UbuntuCon, …
• collect donations to fund the projects
• …

In short: Don’t focus your search for help only on programmers. Every user may become a very useful member of your team.

External developer resources

Sometimes companies use your software and they need a certain feature or have other interest in your project. When you are lucky, they’ll assign one or more developers of their staff to your project (if you allow this) and they’ll work on it in their work time. Or the company pays members of your team to implement something they need. This is not uncommon, especially in projects like frameworks, EPR systems, shopping carts etc. Just be sure that the stuff they are demanding fits in your global plan. Don’t let pure economical reasons drive your project or it will soon be off the track! Other ways of getting help are sponsored events like the google Summer of Code. You can apply with your project for certain programming tasks and when your project is chosen, then google will pay a student for a summer to perform that task. This has several advantages for your project. You will get a lot of visibility in the public which may result in more people using your software or joining your project. You will have to  select two mentors that will have the chance to fly to the US and be part of the mentors camp that google organizes before the whole thing starts. But be aware of the dates. When you are late, then you’ll have to wait for the next year. And don’t be disappointed when your project has not been selected. Just apply again next year. I’ll try to find a project that has participated before and interview them for a more comprehensive blog post. Long story short: Paid development is a chance for every project to get a boost. Try to apply for the google SoC or try to find partners in the industry. Just be aware of the responsibility that the project is first, not the money!

Conclusion

So, there are many ways to find people that help you in your journey and don’t be afraid to let certain tasks go. You can’t do everything on your own and other people are eager to be part of the project. It’s important to find people that help you, if you want your project to live a long and healthy life. There are always people leaving and joining, so the bigger your team is the more people you have constantly working on it. Maybe with the google SoC or paid development you can attract even more team members with whom you can share the work and maybe even the important tasks. Try it!

early-phase · external-help · introduction · social-skills · talk

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