Administrative goodies - An overview of major software aspects

I wanted to dedicate an entry to the administrative aspect of sofware projects, because sometimes the project can have a very good architecture, excellent code and marvellous performance and yet it fails the expectations because it has a very poor administration. I will not get very deep into this topic, because it is the least technical aspect (at least for developers and IT persons).

Basically these are the major administrative aspects:

• Licensing. How are you going to license the project? is it a free social project? are you going to sell add ons? how much will each license cost. These are some questions that must be answered when creating a software project, because in the end you need to find a way to pay for the development of the project. You must also make sure that you're following the rules of your country, otherwise you'll have problems when trying to commercialize the project.
• Marketing. You have to know very well your target market to do marketing. It's important to reach your people and to make them use your software. Here you must think about stuff like: is there any other similar software? how can I reach more people? what are the strengths of the system? How can I communicate the features of the system to the target users?
• Brand creation. It doesn't matter if the project is going to be free. if you're targeting a wide market of people, you must create your brand and make everybody recognize the project with the logo or slogan of it. Think about a small and easy to understand slogan that describes your system. Have you seen this before? of course! for giving you an example, all apple products have a very small slogan that makes all the world know why are they created and the usage that each product has.
• Payment methods. If you're going to commercialize your project, keep in mind the payment methods, and analyse the options that you can offer to your target market.
• Contracts. If you're selling the software to another company,  don't forget to have a very good and specific contract! The documentation made for the test can be helpful, because it describes the features covered and the expectations, so you can use it for the contract with your customer.

Short entry, I know! but I hope you like it. Leave comments at the end of the section and let me know if you want me to talk about a particular topic.