Ever felt like the projects you’ve spent hours—maybe even months—working on just aren’t paying off?

Maybe you’ve been told to “build more projects” if you want to stand out to employers.

So you build and build, adding projects to your portfolio with the hope that quantity will somehow lead to quality.

Along the way you find, you had to abandon few projects because you got stuck. Or you find that other people have done some cooler projects.

You also feel that your project is what everyone else is doing.

Or you may feel that you are not confident about how you created the project.

You’re not alone.

Many developers and job seekers are facing the same issues—putting their time and energy into projects they think will make them job-ready, only to find they’ve missed the mark.

The Real Problem Behind "Just Build More Projects"

Building projects can be valuable, but only if you’re building the right projects for where you are in your career right now.

Without a clear method to choose, it’s easy to end up working on projects that either

• don’t make a real impact,

• become overwhelming, incomplete burdens that lead to burnout rather than career progress.

So how do you know if a project is right for you?

Well, I have been looking over all the mistakes that I made in my career when looking for a job and also some of the right things that I did.

I wanted to create something that would provide a step-by-step approach so that you do not make the same mistakes that I made and achieve the results faster than I did.

The result.

PACE Framework.

The PACE Framework: Plan, Analyze, Create, Execute

PACE is a simple, four-step framework I developed to help job seekers and developers select projects that lead to results. Here’s how it works:

1. Plan

Yeah, that doesn’t sound insightful. But doing the boring stuff works.

Before you begin your project there are 3 essential steps you need to do:

Market Research

Identify the available opportunities in the kind of role that you are looking for in the specific location you are looking for. Typically, you want it to be in the city you are living in unless you are looking for a remote job.

Learning Intention

Identify your learning goals based on your market research.

Project Selection

Use the outputs from your previous two steps to select a project that aligns with the available opportunities and your learning goals.

2. Analyze

Analyze requirements

Create a list of requirements that will help you achieve your goals.

Align architecture

This is where you will have the first brush with technology. Think about how the tech stack that you are looking to build in the project will fit with your requirements. You will draw boxes and think about how these boxes will interact with each other.

3. Create

Design Solution

It is time to go deeper with your diagram.

You will now develop on paper how these boxes interact with each other and in what sequence.

This is where you get the bigger picture of how everything will look once you have built it.

Breakdown into tasks/stories

This is when you break the gigantic piece of work into small bits of tasks that you can do and create goals around.

You created the map of what you have to do by designing the solution.

This step will help you create milestones within the map so that you know where you are and how far you need to go.

4. Execute

The final step is to start writing code. You take each story and start building.

Did you see how different it is compared to 90% of the people who begin writing code the first time they select the project?

These steps can help you take the guesswork out of selecting the right projects and build your portfolio with intention.

But there’s so much more that goes into this process.

That’s why I have created a free workshop where I will go deep with each of these steps so that you learn all the nuances and be ready to get the framework implemented in your current project.

You’ll learn more about what to look for in your own goals, how to tailor projects to your job search, and how to stand out in a competitive job market.

Register for the workshop - PACE Yourself to a Dream Dev Job: 4 Steps to Standout Software Projects

If you’re ready to stop wasting time on projects that don’t pay off, this workshop is for you.

Let’s make sure that every project you build is one that can help you move forward.

Hope to see you there!