Many times we came across so many ideas, some of them we find exciting and to some other, we rapidly lose interest as we start to work on them.

Being a self-taught developer, side projects was my only flex to stand out from other developers.

So I wrote some major Points that might help you in the building process.

Share your Idea

Share your project purpose with your peers, relative, friends and anyone who you think will be a good judge of your objective.

This will help you in

1. To check that are your friends really excited to use that app
2. Instant feedback on what could be not useful or what makes it more appealing.
3. It will help you psychologically to build a mindset of working on this app because now you have shared this idea with your friends.

Research out the Stack

This is one of the weird parts of a side project, when it comes to building things there are many tech stacks that can build that functionality that you want. So it becomes difficult to choose the perfect stack.

I have gone through this similar problem many times and it is one of the reasons that there are so many of my side projects which are not in development now.

But I follow these catch to figure out which tech stack I want to work with and which will be feasible for me.

• Judge your basic skills

Checkout on yourself, are you good with the tech stack the one you think will work for you.

If you are good with that then it's perfect.

Go and start building.

• Learn something new ?

ASK YOURSELF

• Do i need to learn something new to build the app functionality ?*

Yes ? then

How much time it will take ?

Note this time.

• Do i have resources to learn that ?*

  Note down the resources.

  Now the main scenario comes, when should I learn that ?

  Along with the development or before building the project?

  my suggestion

  if the functionality you want to build using that tech is a core of your project then i would prefer to learn at the initial step of the building and if it is just some add on objectives then learning that thing along with building it works out for me.

Regulate your Time

Surely Time is an important aspect of everything we do in life.

In the Development process setting deadlines saves a lot of time for the clients and the user.

Building an app from scratch can take a lot of days, months or even years or so.

But it totally depends on the app too, does it really need that much length of time to get build?

So it is necessary to set a timeline of the building process.

Following are the things to lookout.

1. How much time you could spend on building it.
2. It should never collide with your work hours or school hours
3. Don't overdo yourself, takes small steps and decide according to that.

Make Specific Todos

No Doubt Todos are one of the best productive tools .

But it really matters that you have specific todos or general todos.

Building a project with specific todos will act as catalyst to your productivity.

This is an example of having a specific todos

Frontend

• [ ] Add flex design to container
• [ ] Make footer fix

• [ ] Change button background gradients

  Backend

• [ ] Add a error handler.

• [ ] Add a routes for user.
• [ ] Connect the database.

So having todos similar to this give you a brief idea of what you will do in the current time and ahead of it.

Now comes the Exciting Part...

Draw Wireframes

You can use your notebooks or tools like Figma or anything which works for you.

NOTE: It is hard to build a wireframe for the first time. So you have to draw it again and again until all your functionality and navigation is sorted out.

While drawing a wireframe, try to write a note for logic or some additional thing that you want to deal with it in future.

The last thing is to put it on a wall so you don't have to look in your notebook or on your gadgets every time.

Now start BUILDING...

In the end, share your developed app with a skilled developer. Get feedback and work on the issue till the App seems complete to you.

Best wishes for your next project. ✨

Cheers 🍷