Mentoring a project: the right project
This post is an update on my mentoring project idea.
Finding the right project
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen that I’m now looking for a different project to work on. Whilst the previous project I had in mind would have been great fun, the client had a very tight deadline. I didn’t want to push that pressure on to students and freelancers who are likely to have other work they need to do in order to pass their studies or pay the bills.
It’s that typical situation where the client can have it two of three ways “fast, cheap, good quality.” Working on a project that doesn’t allow time for good quality isn’t going to help anyone get worthwhile experience.
What would be the right project?
I’m trying to think about what would make the ideal project in this kind of situation. This is what I came up with:
- A website project where the end goal would be to launch the site
- A new website or a complete redesign, so new ideas can be generated and developed
- A project where every element (design, development, hosting) is entirely in the freelancer’s hands, so they can get a wide experience
- A project with one or two stakeholders (clients) so that communication is fairly straight-forward (but still of utmost importance!)
- A modest budget. I want everyone to gain something, so there may not be a huge budget for the project, but I want there to be some budget. Of course, the experience is supposed to be the valuable part of this project, but I wouldn’t work for free so I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do it either.
Do you have a project that we could use?
This means I’m now looking for a more suitable project. If you’re in need of a small(ish) website, and don’t have the budget for a fulltime professional web designer or developer, please get in touch with me.