How to lead and complete projects?

Question

Project management

I have one friend. Let's call him by changing his name, for example, Sergey .
Sergey is far from professional programming. Very far. It doesn't matter who he is, but let's say there will be a teacher. And so, Sergey, due to some interest in programming, decided to launch some startup on the Internet, but due to the fact that Sergey is a teacher for schoolchildren.
And so he learns to program, create various web applications, and as he learns, he creates his own project. More precisely, it does not quite create. He begins to study something, then, due to the fact that something does not work out for him, he does not know what to do next, or due to the fact that he is disappointed in his brainchild, he immediately abandons his project without doing anything essential. It would not be terrible if he had not done this for ten years.
I remember when I was still a student, in my first year they told us about development cycles, it seems that they were not really needed anywhere, but my friend lacks this knowledge. But not a single programming textbook, not a single course, has such information. Perhaps this is what he lacks? Or some other knowledge that is given little attention? Or maybe it's because he's a teacher and prof. deformation hinders it?
I really want to help my friend and, most importantly, myself, often when I work on some of my own projects, it happens that I give up a lot of what I want to create, I don’t know where to go next, or I understand that I’m too buried in particular, completely forgetting about some more general and important things. Maybe Sergey has the same problem?
How to properly approach the creation of your own projects, especially if you work not in a team, but alone?

Answer 1

The project does not need to be completed. It must be launched as quickly as possible and then iteratively developed.
Not surprisingly, none of the programming kings write about this. After all, this has nothing to do with the actual skill of writing code.

Answer 2

Before making your web project, you need to at least approximately calculate how much money it will bring and how monetization will be carried out.
Many projects are closed due to the fact that they do not make a profit, therefore, they become uninteresting to the creators.
If there are no problems with this, then the stage of design and selection of technologies begins.
If the technologies are chosen, then the API is designed, either using swagger (OpenApi) or just markdown in a notepad, or whatever is more convenient for you.
When the API is ready, the database is designed.
When the design of the API and database is ready, development begins directly.
It is a bad idea to start programming when an API or database project is not ready. as you program, it may turn out that somewhere something is wrong or something is missing, although this could be found out at the design stage.
PS To study this topic, any book on Software development life cycles will do. In Russian Software Life Cycle . There is GOST on this topic.

Answer 3

The project must be approached with a desire, with the desire to achieve something, for example, I was developing a trading platform for the game, at that time I didn’t even think if I could create it at all, I just had a goal, if something didn’t work out, I tried to improvise with my own means, if it’s really bad, then google has grown up a bit in development and realized that my platform is a crutch, because the writing was terrible in places, in general, the conclusion from all this, while doing a project, you gain knowledge and develop programming skills, the main thing is not to retreat, to go to the goal with your head up :)

Answer 4

Very few people can complete a project alone. Read Yitzhak Adizes about 4 types of people needed in every project. It is very difficult to contain both yin and yang at the same time (this is not with him, I am from myself).
Look for like-minded people who will complement what you lack.

Answer 5

First you need to subscribe / download a video course on the selected technology. Their sea is on Udemy, Pluralsight, Lynda.
Most modern courses teach technology in the form of creating one complete project. And you need to do this project on your IDE. Directly one to one: the announcer typed "vaadin-grid-column width="60px" flex-grow="0"". Pause the video and type this line into your IDE. It is important to print, not copy-paste: this way your hands will remember what to do.
By the end of the course, your friend will already have one completed project. And when he takes on his project, he will already have both experience and more confidence.
And then, as advised: we release a trial version of the product, look at the market reaction, refine ...

Answer 6

Based on your description, I see 2 reasons that prevent your friend from completing projects:
1) He tries to do everything alone, while not being a specialist. This is an extremely inefficient way. For example, if programming is needed there, and he is not a programmer, then you need to find a like-minded programmer, etc. Then the project will not come to a standstill due to incompetence.
2) It looks like your acquaintance is a researcher by temperament. Those. he likes starting new projects, learning something new. As soon as the "learn new" stage is replaced by the "plow" stage, such people are blown away and quickly find a new idea that inspires them. If my guess is correct, then he needs to either find activities related to research, or people who
"Development cycles" and so on will not help him.