At a time when banks are shedding IT roles by the dozen, it seems counter-intuitive that 83 per cent of the nation’s chief information officers should report they are confident about the future of their business to the extent that 45 per cent expect to hire IT staff in the first six months of the year. The question remains – is this a dead cat bounce?
Software is only as good as the people that work on it. All of the great open source projects had great project teams. If you want to be the next big thing in open source a good team is essential. Here's the low down on getting a gang together as well as the non-coding roles you'll want.
Last week, we began discussing things you'll want to think about when it comes to planning a new open source project. This included the big idea, matters of money, and choice of language and platform. Today we'll talk about something of vital importance, namely making a project team.
True, many good pieces of software have been developed by smart individuals. For instance, perl by Larry Wall or GNU Emacs by Richard Stallman – and not least of all the Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds. Yet, as these projects matured and captivated audiences they have evolved to the point they are maintained by well run teams of talented people.
I certainly believe individuals can produce and develop a good product, please don't get me wrong here. However, I know from my own experience that one person is going to hit limitations. They will have time constraints. They will have limitations as to the number of different platforms they can test the product on. And, definitely in my case, there are creative limitations.
Let me expand on the matter of creativity: consider Firefox and its icon which can only be described as, well, iconic. The little firey fox wrapping around the globe is well known. Similarly, the Tux penguin which has become synonymous with Linux is a well established identity. I hope I'm a fairly decent software developer but when it comes to making a standout visual identity my use of The GIMP – even Microsoft Paint – are akin to a monkey poking a stick at a dead body. Nobody would consider the monkey to be a brain surgeon, and similarly my scrawlings are far from impressive.
Fortunately, there are many, many creative people in the world who perhaps cannot program a computer but who have a keen eye for crafting a strong logo and who are virtuosos at making graphics apps sing. If someone contributed imagery to a project of mine I would be ecstatic.
Similarly, it's a fairly honest stereotype that techie types aren't so hot at documentation. You don't have to look far on open source repositories to find great software which come with nary a jot of help in the way of installation and set up. There are many gifted writers who embrace open source software and who can make a definite contribution to any project.
Even if you are extraordinarily literate, you might not be multilingual. I certainly hope I document my software reasonably well – but sorry, it's English only. A translator can do wonders in bringing an open source project to the world – and not only with the documentation; all the screens and dialogs and prompts inside could be translated also.
So, how do you find these people? Please do read on.
Michelle Thomas
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