Loading...
Answers
MenuHow to estimate and charge for software development
Answers
Hi Valentin,
For projects that are fairly open-ended, you can provide a fixed quote that takes into account enough buffer to ensure you are safe. The downside is that could mean losing the opportunity due to having a price that's not competitive. However, that's better than risking your business / layoffs on what could become a wildly unprofitable project.
There are plenty more ways to go about it, but in the end it's going to come down to either (1) determining the price where you feel you have derisked enough to make the potential reward worthwhile, or (2) seeing if someone with experience in the project area can give you a more accurate estimate.
Wish you well with this!
Ryan
Hi Valentin,
Adding more to Rayan’s point and also elaborating a bit. As a feasibility study you could check over internet if the problems are solved by others. Are there any clue/logic/open-source implementation of them? They could be your exact problems or similar to them. The respective developer can understand the ways. This will help you to identify the blockers if any. Because blockers are the ones which shoots you away out of your estimation. Once the logics are understood break the problem statements into various small demonstrable outputs and estimate them. For any Output there is always an easy part, average part, hard part and harder part. Easy or certain part which you can estimate correctly, because it done earlier, but add few buffers time to hard + harder part.
So, if you don’t have any expert to suggest & estimate, above is way you could approach.
As Rayan mentioned you should always balance between your good/exact estimated time-line and bagging the project. Sometime you need to estimate tight (effective/billable hours) in terms of providing cost but could stretch the calendar deadline through project management negotiations.
Thanks,
Sandeep
Hello. No one has experience in estimating unknown work. There is plenty of effort estimation methodologies and they all are not exactly correct. You can use one of the methodologies used with Agile. Like the one when the team gets together and each member has a card where he/she writes her estimate and puts card face down. Then when everyone is ready cards are opened and members with biggest and smallest estimates explain their numbers and team discuss. Then you repeat the cycle with cards, and repeat it until all numbers are the same or very close. There are other methodologies, but this one is very popular. You can Google for "agile effort estimation methodologies" or like this.
Related Questions
-
Which is the best hosted free bug tracking tool for a team size of up to 10 members?
Being a freelance developer for the last 10 years or so, I have seen and used almost every project management software you can think of, open-source and closed, and I have found that the "best bug tracking tool" completely depends on your process. I employ and direct teams in an Agile process that involves loose story-based requirements with point-based estimates, two-week cycles of iterative development, planning and retrospective sessions, and look-ahead and show-and-tell meetings with the stakeholders. It's important to me, then, that my tools have a method of capturing all those pieces with as much detail as I need but no more. On projects, I've successfully used Pivotal Tracker, Unfuddle, Redmine, Codebase HQ, Basecamp, Trello, and many others. I usually recommend people to Trello for light, agile management; it's essentially a digitized version of sticky notes and swim lanes. If your team actually needs a full-featured ticketing system, see Redmine (Rails), Trac (Python), or Mantis (PHP), depending on your language preference. Hosting a version of these yourself is fairly trivial, and numerous options exist for cheap or free hosted versions. For something in the middle, Github Issues is a good fit and the open-source clone GitLab.org replicates most of those features nicely. However, if you're looking for a hosted version, you're probably looking to offload that tricky "backup" thingy, and in that case, how important is your data? How proprietary? What's your business model? If you're working on an open-source project, Github will give your team a free account with private repos, issues, wikis, and the like. If you're okay with your project being "readable by all", public projects on Pivotal are still free. I'm mostly a consultant these days, leading small groups of junior or intermediate developers into a more productive, more mature, fully operational teams of senior software developers. One of the first things I teach folks is how to use a project management system... and why! It'll save your bacon if it's simple, effective, and reliable. With a few minutes of discussion about your project, I can probably help you select the right tool and service for your team. Let me know if I can help with that. Best of luck!DR
-
How should the dynamic between a ux designer and a developer who are working together look like?
It depends a lot of in the skill sets and experience of both people but in most cases the ux designer should be controlling the developer pretty heavily in order to make sure his ideas come through properly. The UX designer may just need to work on his approach so people don't feel bossed around and more like they are working together. In an ideal world, there would be a project manager who makes sure everything is communicated well and keeps the dynamic feeling great.JM
-
How do I run a closed beta test for my mobile application? Development will be finished in 3 weeks.
You should try to engage people using social networks, it is easier to spread than email. The conversion rate on emails are low but is still a valid tool for that. Send and email with a simple and objective message that will make people want to try. The best way to have feedback from users is to watch them use the app. You should put them on the hands of everybody that you can and without any instrucions and just watch, don´t even say that the app is yours. Try to do it a lot. If you want feedback from others, you can include the feedback form inside the app and suggest users to answer occasionally. I would also strongly recommend to use a tool as Flurry Analytics. Is the best way to get data from how is the use of the application. Pay attention to those data and be open to change your app a lot, you may need more features or cut some off to make it easier to use. If you need more help please contact me.BS
-
What's the best way to build a MVP web app that handles order management, purchasing, invoicing, supplier management and inventory?
The best way to build an MVP for any SaaS product is to create a landing page that looks like a real product. Here's an example of one I built. http://www.happiily.com In this case, it advertises the primary features of the product and invites people to sign-up. When they do, they are asked for information which qualifies the person and then sends me an email. I built this quickly and very inexpensively and started getting inbound leads from it shortly thereafter. I got on the phone with each person who signed-up and explained the features I wanted to build and was able to do a lot of customer learning based on that. Happy to talk to you in a call if you'd like to talk more about customer development with SaaS products.TW
-
How do I run a successful closed beta for my web application that is almost done with development?
Create an ideal customer profile. Create some questions that will allow to you survey a potential tester to determine if they fit your profile. Design simple landing page with very clear value proposition that speaks to your ideal customer. Ask for a minimum of information up-front (email), but ask for more info after they commit by submitting the first piece of info. (KISSmetrics does a good job of this on their current website trial signup). Use the their answers to these profiling questions to put the applicants into buckets. Let in the most ideal bucket first, or split them into groups if they're big enough. Try and measure engagement the best you can. Measure qualitative and quantitative data. Schedule calls with your beta testers to find out more, especially with the ones who's user behavior seemed to indicate that they didn't get value from your product. Find out why. Make sure they are indeed your ideal customer. Pick up the phone and get to know your customers inside and out. Meet them in person if possible. Incorporate their feedback quickly and get more feedback. Rinse repeat.DH
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.