Full Life Cycle

When you work by yourself on software, you are responsible for the full life cycle of software development. You need to identify the requirements of the software. Then you have to design the software. You need to do coding and unit testing. In fact, all testing will most likely be done by yourself. Finally you have to deal with creating the installation for your software. This is the full life cycle of software development.

In a Micro ISV, you actually have to go above and beyond the full life cycle of development. You need to procure hardware and software and web hosting. You also need to devise the marketing for your product. The benefit of this is that you have full control of everything. That is also the downside. You must accomplish all tasks. So it is difficult to focus on any one particular part.

I love programming and debugging myself. But I can only devote a small portion of my time to these tasks when running my business. Perhaps when I make enough money, I can contract out the tasks I dislike. First I need to make a lot of money. Then I need to determine if it is worth it to buy help. At least I can choose to use some friends of mine whom I trust. Maybe I can talk them into billing me the "family rate".