Revealing Plans For a New Team Building App

Over the past few weeks I’ve been slowly organizing ideas for a new project. Today, I’d like to share a quick overview of what’s in store.

Defining the problem:

As a solo business owner, I regularly hire freelancers to build virtual teams on a per-project basis. In order to sustain this freelance-agency hybrid model, my network of freelancers must continuously grow over time. Meaning, I regularly interview, evaluate, hire, and partner with new people every few weeks in order to build up my network.

To keep track of my network, I’ve been relying heavily on Gmail search and my own (un-trusted) memory. When a new project comes along, I’d ask myself, who do I know (off the top of my head) that would be a great fit here? Who have I interviewed before, liked, but never hired? Did I receive a resume months ago that might deserve a second look today? Without a systemized organization tool, these questions are harder and harder to answer.

So yes, I’m building that tool: An app to organize and grow a virtual team. The concept is something like a CRM (customer relationship manager), but for a team rather than sales leads (“TRM?”).

This app will do the following:

• Act as an enhanced contact manager for my virtual team (more on this later).
• Help me better organize applicant’s email cover letters & resumes.
• Help me stay in touch with my network during the times when we’re not working together.

What this app won’t do:

• It won’t be a project manager. It’s not a Basecamp competitor and won’t try to be. While Basecamp (and other PM apps) serve the project-in-progress phase, this app will focus tightly on the pre-project team-building phase.
• It won’t be a to-do list app. This app is less about tasks and milestones, and more about contacts, relationships, and growing a business.
• It won’t be an accounting/invoicing/time tracking. Nope, not a FreshBooks competitor either.

This app won’t be an alternative to those listed above, but rather work in conjunction with them.  It may even find ways to sync with project management and accounting apps to help tie things together.

Up Next…

I’m mid-way through creating some wireframes for the various screens, functionality, UI.  I plan to share those once they’re a bit farther along.

There are some unanswered questions yet to be addressed, like:

• Hosted or self-hosted?  (leaning hosted)
• What features to add?
• Perhaps more importantly, which features to remove?
• What to name the app?  (got a few ideas…)

I’ll be posting answers to these questions and other developments as this project moves forward.

Excited!

UPDATE

Posted since this writing:

• Mapping out the app
• Wireframing a web app
• App design philosophy
• App designs (in the browser)