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Why not leave them alone and let them form a no pay until published team - as long as they are being honest about it. They need the experience



Because they don't work and while they aren't using money, they are using valuable time. And every team leader that gets 10 people to work for them under this model, not knowing what the heck they are doing, is wasting their time as well. If the team members were learning something it might be worthwhile, but what most people learn is "don't do that again!"

Think of it this way: There are a million reasons I can think of why having some pay during development is a good idea but I can't think of ONE advantage to the pay-after-publish model (except the obvious "it's free" and since I can't repeat "you get what you pay for" enough, this is not a compeling reason to me.)

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It is a proven fact that the availabililty of funds does not increase the success rate.



I don't know of any Project Management practices that deals with NO money though. As such, I would interpret that comment as "more money doesn't mean more success" and take this as the standard cautionary tale to managers everywhere to not simply throw more money at a problem and expect that to solve it. But I don't think we can take this to mean that a project with no money during development and one with money have equal chance of success...that simply isn't true.

The real dilema here is that I don't think that there is ANY management wisdom (that I've come across) that deals with projects that have no Budget. In fact, if we were to try to balance the time/quality/money triangle with NO money, then either Time has to go WAY up or Quality WAY down...an effect we already see in this forum with TUSC-ware as an example of the former and Vaporware as an example of the latter.

So while I agree that the availability of funds doesn't guarantee success, any monies that can be used to bring the time down or the quality up is certainly a step in the direction of Completion. This is my main point. Use any form of consideration to make sure that your project has the greatest chance for completion and success. This can be anywhere from cash to free web space to gift certificates. This will make sure that the team is invested in your project and has some stake in it. It will also make sure that your team knows, upfront, that it is appreciated and that their efforts will lead to a real product. It also inspires confidence in you as the Team Leader.


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