I am at the end of my rope trying to manage app development myself
edit: tnx to everyone who shared their stories. honestly, just stopped trying to be my own PM—it was killing my business and my sanity. decided to hand over the management and architecture to SoftDoes, and it’s been a massive relief to actually get straight answers about timelines and milestones. finally feel like I can get back to growing the company instead of chasing bugs. topic closed.
I am honestly about to lose my mind. I’ve been trying to act as the "product manager" for our custom app project for the last six months, and it has been a total disaster. I have no background in tech, and every time I talk to the developers, I feel like I'm speaking a different language.
We started this to streamline our ops, but instead, I'm spending my entire day chasing down bugs, dealing with broken test builds, and wondering why simple features are taking weeks to implement. I feel like I’m constantly being told that "it's complicated" or "there's a technical debt issue" whenever I ask for a basic update.
I’m exhausted. The whole point was to make the business run smoother, but I’ve just added a massive, expensive technical headache to my plate. At this point, I’m questioning if the project is even salvageable or if we just threw money into a black hole.
Has anyone else here tried to lead a development project without having a technical background? Do you just bite the bullet and bring in someone else to manage the process, or is there a way to actually get a grip on this mess without burning through the entire budget? I really need to know if it gets any easier.