Tipps von geförderten Projekten

Die Seite wird bald auch auf Deutsch verfügbar sein.

In English

Here are some tips from projects that have been funded in the previous rounds of Prototype Fund. There’s no one-size-fits all here , but we hope you’ll find some useful ideas for your funding time!

This is a collaborative list, please add any info that you think is missing. As people experience things differently, it is absolutely ok if what you write contradicts information that is already there.

Time Management

• Six months are shorter than one thinks. Make a timeline and try to stick to it.
• At Prototype Fund you have time to try out things! (Nonetheless)
• Plan your grant time carefully: Make sure you are aware of the various aspects of the Prototype Fund and the individual deadlines.
• 3 months are long and then 3 months are short: Do the big things immediately and make sure you finish them.
• Don’t forget you are here to build a prototype, not a production-ready product. Keep the amount of extra features small and focus on your functioning prototype first. But think about the architecture from the beginning - you don’t want to have to throw away your prototype.
• Find a balance between the explorative work and the time when you implement your plan.
• Plan enough buffer time: Everything takes longer than expected.
• There are many things you should plan enough time for:
  • Documentation
  • Wireframes
  • Finding follow-up funding
  • Cleanup and bugfixes
  • Admin
  • Communication with Prototype Fund (group calls, updates, etc.)
  • Community management & talking to people
  • Writing about your project
• Don’t underestimate the time needed for the bureaucracy (formal application, timesheets, payment requests and so on). This will require some time at the beginning, then it will become less.
• Taxes require time.
• Keeping focus is important: Make a clear separation between official work and FOSS-Contributions you want to do on your own time (if this is your hobby).
• Secondary jobs are complicated alongside PTF full-time: When the developers combine several activities, it is a good solution to have more than one developer in the team.
• Freelancers: It can be difficult for self-employed people who don't want to lose clients as people in this situation tend to work too many hours. Plan 70% for the Prototype Fund and leave the remaining time for own projects

• It can get stressful at the end! Get going quickly because time flies quickly.
• The beginning is not the beginning, the end is not the end (even if from the legal point of view they are). There is a lot to prepare before the funding period: Application and admin, communication in the team, etc. After the funding period is over, the final report has to be written. With community work, marketing, communication and maintenance or further development you ensure the sustainability of the project.
• Taking time off is important. Avoid burnout!

Project & Team Management

• Build a strong team: In the time between the funding confirmation (Förderzusage) and the submission of the formal application (Antrag), you can insert additional team members. Use this as an opportunity if you are missing skills in the team.
• Re-evaluate your project steps regularly, discuss with your team to redistribute tasks if your workload is too high.
• Don‘t lose time with getting everything right! Give yourself some space to experiment and learn.
• Write tests early, however naive or small. Improve as you go.
• Flowcharts help you map out your own idea, but also lets others understand your plan. If you don't do it before, making it afterwards at least helps you overview your system.
• Be realistic with yourself: what is my working style? If I can't stick to a plan, rather find solutions to deal with it instead of setting unrealistic goals.
• Don't think your project too big - start with small parts and set clear short term goals
• Team communication is key: Schedule time for discussions about the contents and timeline of your project regularly.
• Use Monday updates as time for reflection.

Users & Communication

• Focus on users.
• Approach users at a very early stage. Through their experiences and feedback, and especially problems, you can be much more sure during the development phase that you are going in the right direction. Also, it drives you when users are satisfied and they give more meaning to the project. (User work, however, is time-consuming and can also lead to more confusion about the problem situation because each user has a different opinion about it. Nevertheless, we find the work essential.)
• Feedback from end users (not only from the tech community!) is important (and sometimes hard to get).
• Getting people to migrate to a new tool and test it takes time and energy.
• Communicate! Talking to people, giving interviews or writing articles eats up an incredible amount of time, but is extremely valuable for the project.
• Visual things draw people in to be curious. Yourself and your team included! We made a larger logo early and it generated a lot of interest by itself from all around.
• Talk to experts early.

Building a sustainable project

• Think about a follow-up grant or business model in time, if you need it! (That means still during the funding period).
• Decide how and where you will write documentation early in the project. Save yourself from reorganizing it later.

• After the kickoff, take your time to read all documents and to gain an overview. Most answers are already there!

• Make the most of the opportunity to meet others online in a relaxed way (group calls, etc.)

Admin & Overhead

• Get all the info you need about Prototype Fund in the beginning: read the docs (most information is already there!), make sure you understand the timeline, and don‘t let the administrative tasks stress you: you can always get help from the Prototype Fund and DLR!

• Ask questions to DLR. Don’t be scared to call or write! The DLR people are awesome and so, so helpful. Fear not the administrative beast.
• There is no agreed upon status for the grant money. Get a good Steuerberater and cross your fingers: you may or may not pay VAT and income tax on it.

• Proactively contact the tax office (Finanzamt) if you have questions (e.g. about tax exemption) - they are helpful (depending on the tax office, of course).
• Bear in mind that the payments might take time.

Coaching

• Don’t wait too long! If you have a project management coaching, go for it early. For some questions it can also be useful to organize the first UX-Coaching early, for example to define the target group.
• If you're on your own, find someone to chat to and sense-check you and to explain things to. This can be a person you know - or you can use coachings for this. My initial coaching sessions felt really productive just by virtue of talking to someone about the project, in depth.
• Use the coaching at the beginning as the kickoff of the funding phase.

Data, licenses & dependencies

• Invest more time in the research before you start: Who has already built something similar, what can I learn from, which modules can I adopt?

• Research early: If your projects depends on the quality of the data you are getting, research before. Be careful: Data can get worse and worse as you dig deeper in old data.
• Check the data situation and availability, licenses etc. very early on. We spent quite a long time trying to get a certain data set, but then it turned out that we couldn't really work well with it and so we had to switch to other data (which you could have used from the beginning). This can hold up a project in terms of time.
• Don‘t lose too much time on fixing old bugs if you are not building from scratch but work on the basis of an existing project.