Reported on Slashdot.org

Fifty percent of respondents said a typical project cost between $1 million and $5 million, and 7 percent pegged it at more than $20 million.

As for labor, some 63 percent said it took less than 200 “person-months” to finish a project, while 38 percent said it took at least 2,000.

Meanwhile, more than one-third of projects are abandoned after being implemented, and only 37 percent of finished projects met users’ needs.

Analyst: In-house app development fraught with waste | InfoWorld | News | 2008-08-14 | By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service

I’m so glad I don’t work in corporate anymore. Brilliant leaders with strong programming and design skills are hard to find, so most corporate projects are just rudderless ships waiting for the sponsors to realise they’ve been going in circles for three years.

1. Be remarkable. If it’s not new and unique, it’ll disappear in the noise of the internet.
2. Provide useful information. People care about themselves, not your business, so give them something they need for free before selling yourself.
   
3. Don’t push your products, push your target markets’ dreams.
4. Appeal to your readers’ senses, with visual, auditory, and tactile language and images.
5. And most importantly, don’t be afraid to experiment until you find what works with your audience.

The essence of teamwork: make it easy for the rest of your team to get work done, and do it unselfishly. How effective would your team be if everyone worked with this goal firmly in mind?

1. Connections – human, computer, biology – are everything. Life = networks.
2. Never compromise your ideals because someone said it’s impossible, stupid, or a waste of time.
3. Do focus on changing the world, don’t focus on the money. If you provide value, the money will come.
4. Have a healthy disregard for the impossible. If someone hasn’t done it yet, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
5. Money is a problem, not a solution. Money cannot solve your problems, but your solutions can solve the money problem.
6. Value creativity, not money. View creativity as your company’s true bottom-line, or your company will stop growing and die.
7. Go against the grain. Don’t believe in other people’s visions for you, believe in your own.
8. Speed is more important than looking good. A shiny, beautiful car isn’t impressive when it gets overtaken by an old jalopy; the same applies to software.
9. Organic growth is best. Only grow as fast as you need to, don’t waste money on advertising a product you won’t want your mom to use.
10. Focus on users above all else, e.g. don’t do something that might annoy your users just to make more money, they won’t forget.
11. Never betray users’ trust, or anyone else’s.
12. Spend 20% of your time on blue-sky ideas without worrying about how they will make a profit. If it might change the world for the better, it needs to be done, even if it can’t make money.
13. Don’t make enemies of your competitors to stay driven. Be driven by your own values and mission.
14. Beat your own path through the wilderness.

These are the flashes of insight I had while reading The Google Story, please add your own in the comments.

So I’ve put together my idea of a simple solution for you to critique. It may be a gap in the market, or it may be a stupid idea that has no chance of working in reality, which is why I’m kicking it into the wild so you can criticise it before I put too much effort into building it. Take a look at it and let me know what you think!

Summary: Find and network with people who have the skills you need, quickly and simply.

Problem:Too many complicated networking sites that lock you in and expect you to enter your life history and then demand payment when you want to do anything of value on the site. Overcharging for basic services and complicated sign ups mean that not many people want to use these sites, which reduces their value by at least 80% instantly, so the people actually paying for the service aren’t getting their money’s worth.

Solution: Simplified networking using just your name and keywords such as “Java, SQL, looking for contract, looking for permanent employment” where “looking for contract” and “looking for permanent employment” are common keywords that everyone will use so they don’t get offers they’re not interested in.

Once you’ve created your profile, you can search for a keyword, or combination of keywords, to find people to chat to. So if you’re looking for a Java contractor you’d search for “java, looking for contract” and then decide who you want to contact based on how their skills have been endorsed by others.

You can then leave a message in their inbox asking them to contact you, and they can reply or block you at their discretion.

Once they reply you can add them to your network, and they are requested to authorize the link. Either of you can delete the link if you want to.

When you’re networked with someone you can endorse their skills individually. For example, if you’ve worked with someone and know they’re good at project management, you can choose to endorse their skill with a short comment saying why you’re endorsing it. This pushes that person up in the rankings of “project management” searches.

If a certain number of people have blocked someone, then their profile will be flagged for investigation and probable black listing.

That’s the heart of the idea, other details will be fleshed out later once a workable prototype is online. Please let me know what you think and if you have any better ideas. Thanks!