An engineer friend developing their own service consulted me about timing for taking on contract development, so I decided to write an article to organize my thoughts.

Background: Operating Company Overview

The overview of the operating company where my engineer friend works is as follows:

• Operating company
• Own service as main business
• Basically doesn't do contract development
• In the past, has done contract development only when "there's business synergy" or "it's profitable"

Don't Do Contract Development When Own Service Sales/PV Are Growing

Since that company runs e-commerce with their own service, their year-end sales and PV are apparently the highest of the year. In such cases, year-end development resources should be allocated to the own service, and contract development shouldn’t be done during this period.

The reason is that when developing one feature for your own service, the impact is higher during periods with high PV, and you can assist in contributing to sales. For example, if there’s an e-commerce site that normally gets 10 million PV but can attract nearly double with 20 million PV toward year-end, implementing one feature during year-end would have nearly double the impact compared to usual.

Summary: Shouldn't Do Contract Development During Peak Season

While reality isn’t this simple, you shouldn’t do contract development during the best period for your own service (≒ peak season). That would be a wise decision. Intelligent management should understand this.

That’s all from the Gemba, where I’ve experienced both own service development and contract development.