The beginning
The initial idea came up during a conversation between a group of friends, who are now responsible for creating Fros, where we discussed what we could do to increase our experience in the software development area, as, until then, we were just beginners. But we didn't just want to create something and make it available on the internet, we wanted something useful, that would help people.
After a long conversation, the idea came up of doing something for open-source developers, as we don't see them receiving due recognition and awards.
Thus, Fros Venture emerged, which was previously called Petrichor.
Organization and initial steps
With the conception of what we should do, we began the stages of functional and non-functional requirements, diagrams, low-fidelity prototypes, what types of technologies, among other aspects of structure and organization. Even though we were beginners and, in fact, it was not necessary to carry out all these steps, since it is not a large application, we would like to face all these 'problems', which are very common in any professional application, as a way of exercising our thinking Critical and resolution of structural and architectural problems, as well as issue management for each one.
As much as it is a small application, we did not expect this stage to be so long and full of details, far beyond structural details, such as designing the logo to match the idea of our project, color palette, branding management, among others. As much as it was a bit annoying to go through this, it was very necessary and today I am satisfied with what we did and our next steps.
Greatest difficulties
The biggest difficulties in this project were certainly the structural process mentioned above, along with the time management of each person in the group with the issues and features that we were adding or resolving. As we were all students, worked on other things and pursued our own lives in addition to managing Fros, it was difficult to equally distribute the work of adding new features and solving bugs, creating design, taking care of marketing, etc.
But despite this, because of our organization and structure previously discussed, we performed our tasks well and, without a doubt, it will be a learning experience that we will take wherever we go.
Conclusion
We went through all the software development and brand management processes in the most professional way we could, as if we were a small company and, because of this, we had incredible experiences throughout the process, and we will take this knowledge to any project we undertake. I believe that any junior developer should go through this type of experience, as certainly nothing learned from it will be in vain. If you don't know where to find an opportunity like this, join Fros Venture and its open-source developers and help this community by exchanging experience and knowledge.