Software Estimations: The Best Techniques
Every project, regardless of its scope, should be analyzed carefully in order to get a head around general ideas and the pitfalls of some approaches. Software estimation is a prediction of how long a project will take and how much it will cost. However, this prediction cannot be 100% accurate, and the process of estimation isn’t taught in YouTube tutorials or Stack Overflow threads. Actually, making accurate predictions is pretty hard. Therefore, we’ve rounded up a list of the best estimation methods you can use.
Why Software Estimates Are so Hard?
Oftentimes, software estimates are too optimistic in terms of time and budget, that is why they don’t stand up to unexpected disruptions and scope changes. Thus, they are not accurate. But what makes software estimates so hard? Back-end and front-end developers have shed light on this question and come up with a list of reasons.
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Availability of only design layouts.
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There is no animation description.
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There are no specifications for different devices and screen sizes.
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The client does not have a clear understanding of the final look of the product he wants.
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The client does not understand the entire development process and mistakenly assumes that it is quick and easy to implement.
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Idealistic views of developers’ capabilities.
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An insufficiently detailed description of the task.
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Lack of experience and business logic.
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The project uses third-party services or technologies that the developers are not familiar with.
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Project requirements change as it develops.
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
Every year, software systems become more complex, therefore, it became necessary to formalize the software development process and create a unified model for its management. The software development life cycle was the first formal project management structure used to define milestones and tasks in the software development process. Usually, the software development life cycle can be divided into six stages, namely:
- Planning
At this stage, business analysts, customer team, and sales representatives work in sync to perform a throughout research, define project scope, create a project roadmap, and make technical recommendations.
- Analysis
Business analysts, project managers (PMs), technical experts, and the customer team set up project objectives, define project functional and design functionality, and find solutions. Besides, an approximate estimate is determined.
UX and UI designers together with architects and PMs create a draft of system architecture and a product design (UX and UI). At this stage, the revaluation also takes place.
- Implementation
Software engineers and project managers are engaged in a software process to create a fully functioning software product.
The development team works on a quality assurance process to ensure the final product meets all the requirements.
- Maintenance
Software engineers and PMs deploy a product and make sure it is up-to-date.
Software Development Estimation Techniques
It’s extremely important to use various estimation techniques to ensure accurate estimation of the project. Klaus Nielsen in his article “Software Estimation using a Combination of Techniques” offers the following classification of the most common software engineering assessment techniques. We will focus on the main ones.
Analogy
This method is based on analogies with the previous projects. The cost of analogous projects is analyzed and compared with the current project, and the main differences (complexity, scale, inflation, etc.) are highlighted.
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Expert Judgment
This technique means that experts who successfully completed similar projects share their knowledge, experience, and give a piece of advice to the current team.
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Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
This method involves dividing the project requirements into a list of features and outputs.
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Constructive Cost Model (CoCoMo)
The key parameters of this model are efforts and schedule. The effort is the labor required to complete a specific task. The unit of measurement is person-months. The schedule is the amount of time it takes to complete the job. Time is proportional to the effort applied and is measured in months or weeks. This model fits into three classes of software projects:
- Organic
A software project is organic if the team size is relatively small, and team members have enough experience in solving the outlined problem.
- Semi-detached
A project is considered semi-detached if the size of an experienced team is medium, however, team members are less familiar with different software environments, and the project is more difficult to develop compared to organic projects.
- Embedded
These projects are complex, they are developed with a set of strict constraints, they require the highest level of knowledge and experience from the developers. On top of that, such software requires a large team with high creativity.
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Project Evaluation and Review Technique
This method implies the use of three ranges of estimates from three data points provided: “the best scenario”, “the worst scenario”, “the most likely scenario”.
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Wideband Delphi
This consensus-based estimation technique offers a high level of interaction between participants. The evaluation team consists of a project manager, a moderator, experts, and representatives of the development team (about 3-7 people). This team holds two meetings: a kickoff meeting and an estimation meeting. The team makes a list of tasks, discusses any doubts or problems they have, each team member revises their list of tasks and makes changes if necessary. Team members then combine the changes to the task estimates to obtain an overall project evaluation.
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Planning poker
All team members take part in this process. Participants sit in a circle and assign values (from 0 to 100) to various tasks. In this case, 0 is given to the easiest task and 100 to the hardest. Team members brainstorm, decide together the value of each task, and accept the final evaluation of the project. The debate continues until consensus is reached.
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How we approach it at Yojji
Yojji experts use agile techniques to estimate your project. Our team carefully analyzes your project taking your budget and timeline into consideration to understand the objectives, the scope of work, and find potential pain points. With the help of an analogy technique and statistical data, we predict the required effort based on the data of analogous projects. Besides, expert judgment is required if an in-house team isn’t experienced enough or isn’t familiar with the cutting-edge technologies used in the project.
We offer detailed research that gives you a better understanding of your software product and its final release. We use different approaches to ensure that our estimates are as accurate as possible.
Conclusion
Software estimations aren’t easy, and it may take you some time to determine the best practices and techniques for you. However, the more projects you complete, the more intuitive the process becomes, and over time you will learn to make accurate estimates. However, the right decision is to seek professional advice. Yojji experts will be happy to offer their services in estimating your project.
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Yojii is impressive both in quality of development work as well as their commitment. Strong focus on delivery, highly technical personnel, flexible approach that allows for rapid development. Strong processes that allow for solid controls.
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As a company, we find Yojji to be excellent development partners - we cannot recommend them more highly and will be very happy to continue working with them in the future.
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They all had a super positive outlook and were dedicated to getting the work completed to a high standard.
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Yojji has delivered an accessible product with thorough consideration for the client's requirements. Users have commented on the platform's user-friendliness and speed. Moreover, the team is easy to communicate with and provides frequent updates. Their development and design skills are impressive.
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