Tag Archives: Developers

How to Estimate a Deadline for a Business Project

 Imagine: The Development of the World

The world was created in seven days (168 hours), and another thousand years (many hours) for testing and adjustments. 

Developer: Here’s the thing, it was just that the technical task (TT) was unclear, and I had to make a few changes. Yes, according to the plan it was two weeks. Well, they didn’t take several things into account, or they were mistaken, so we had to make some adjustments. We had a difficulty rating of much lower than it actually was (10/10). But it’s not a problem, we can clean it up now, and somewhere in a thousand years it will be ready! 

This story is not uncommon. No, this is not about creating the world as a whole, but about the ability to correctly assess the timing it will take to create it. The same word that exists in almost all modern industries – estimate. If it isn’t already obvious from the word itself – estimating is about calculating the time and man-hours it will take to complete a project.

 

How to estimate deadlines correctly

According to McKinsey’s research, 66% of projects ultimately require more resources, and 17% are completely different once the project is complete. As a result, the amounts of time required for revisions are two to three times higher than those initially stated. The blame could be placed on the teams working on the project, but in reality, the actual estimate of the deadline is to blame.

The cause for such discrepancies are often caused by vague descriptions of technical tasks (TT) and may include reasons like the abstractness of the final product, or unpredictability of volume. Taking into consideration that each project is something unique, it is not necessarily surprising that mistakes are made in the evaluation process.

 

What questions should you ask for an accurate deadline estimate?

Prior to starting the estimate, it is imperative for the developers’ team to gather information through conversations with the customer. It is in this conversation that insights are gleaned about each project. While, to the customer, it may seem that the task is quite obvious, and can easily be carried out without fail, it is at this point that the most inconspicuous mistake lurks, primarily due to a lack of information.

Now stop and think: 

What questions would I ask before making an estimate? Have you thought about it? Write your questions down on a piece of paper so we can compare.

Below are some of the questions that should be asked in order to make an accurate estimate:

  • What are the business goals of your project? An obvious question with which to start, but for some reason, everyone immediately rushes to learn about the product, its benefits, and other, little-needed information. In reality, it depends on the business goal for which the product or service is created. The final product will depend on whether it is to triple your company’s income, increase conversion, etc. As an example, if you are an environmental company with a goal to expand your client base, you could talk about ecology for 3 hours, but in the end, the goal will still be to expand the company’s client base, which is where the focus should remain.
  • What is the purpose of the project?  These points look similar, but if we are talking about a company-wide problem, the specific numbers are important here. To ensure success, the customer will need to share specific details. For example: Our goal is to onboard 100 new clients each month.
  • Is there a “killer feature”? Does your product have a killer feature that makes it unique from others like it. Highlighting this feature is essential, then, and needs to be included in the estimate.
  • What is the value of the project? What about the benefits?  When offering a product or service, value is a multidimensional factor where all the conditions need to be met. While the value is important, it is critical to stress the benefits to your audience. The developer will be able to include these factors in the estimate and narrow the focus for development.
  • How will you get started? Here is where you can get stuck for a long time. It can be tricky to make the decision to ask for support from a development team or order a business analysis service, etc. It is worth considering all the options. Perhaps in this particular situation, it would be more beneficial to cut the scope and invest in the best outside option for launching.
  • Is there an end-to-end solution?  That is, is there a plan to go through the entire product from start to finish? A full-cycle contractor can help with this.
  • Are there technical clarifications from checklists for the sale of specific services? Providing these checklists and technical clarifications will streamline development and help clarify the details involved.
  • How and how often will your company deliver the product or service?  Thanks to regular demonstrations, it is much easier to take into account all the needs that arise along the way and immediately adjust for your tasks.

Now you can start the discovery phase, according to the results of which you should have wireframes and at least a high-level specification or prototypes. Now there is everything for an estimate! 

Only with all the information, can you count on an adequate assessment of your outsourcing partner or developer. It is worth mentioning that most likely, at least 90% at one point or another have not conducted a full assessment. 

As an example, if your contractor is especially self-confident and brags that “yes, I will do everything here in a week and it will be fine,” then you should doubt because a specialist or developer can forget to take into account some features which will ultimately result in additional unplanned money and time. It is this reaction that can help you determine how experienced the person is sitting opposite you.  

For the most part, “pessimists” are already experienced workers. They have more experience with these cases, so they know bottlenecks and take into account more scenarios and pitfalls that will appear during implementation. It is these experienced professionals who have compiled a set of tools (templates) for drawing up a project assessment.

In the next article, we want to tell you what estimates of projects you can get, depending on the accuracy of detail.

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Itera Research Reflects: Ukrainian Specialist Is A Bestseller On The Outsourcing Market. Why?

Ukraine – the unannounced Mecca of outsourcing. Moreover, in areas requiring high qualifications: software development, support of IT projects, etc. The outsourcing market is growing at 20% at an annual rate, and this growth is expected to only increase.

Unique offer from Ukrainian outsourcers

Why, despite the serious competition and high activity of Asian companies, a good share of this pie goes to the specialists from Ukraine?

The main reasons:

  • excellent technical education of  IT specialists
  • the ability to make independent interim decisions
  • willingness to solve complex problems
  • minor cultural differences between our specialists and foreign customers.

The puzzles of the Ukrainian cultural code, are very close to Western and Central Europe and even to North Americans. Ukrainians are convenient performers for customers from different parts of Europe precisely they embody the golden mean of Europeans themselves.

The arithmetic mean of cultural Europe

Let’s take distant from each other, as it seems, Swiss and Italians (mentally, not geographically). Different temperaments, different ideas about punctuality, different attitudes to the state power, to the law, different religious degrees, etc. All these differences fall into the range of acceptablу for the average Ukrainian developer fluctuations.

  • We are happy to express openly our emotions. However, we know very well how to hide them on occasion.
  • We know how to be accurate, like a Swiss watch. However, we can talk about reasonable flexibility over time (by the way, this flexibility allows us to work towards reducing the deadline if the project deadlines were cut unexpectedly).
  • With all our hearts we want to trust the state, authorities, and superiors. However, watching the next pirouettes of the “superior”, we are ready to reduce their value in our lives.

Well and further on the list. All this does not say anything about our unprincipled – it is natural flexibility, which allowed us to survive in different conditions for centuries. That is why we can quite organically be both introverts and extroverts, intellectuals and “simple-minded”, etc.

Let us add the common ground for all Europeans: Christianity as a fundamental religion, emerging from Roman law and inherited from the ancient Greeks culture and statehood.

  • Finally, as for most Europeans, English is not native to us. Which to some extent facilitates communication, limiting it to accessible vocabulary.

Yes but no, but yes

Does this make the Ukrainian an ideal outsourcer for a European client? Here we again recall the cultural proximity of our compatriot and client. After all, it is common for us to look (unlike the valiant dumping) not at the collective image, but the individual qualities of the performer. A specific Ukrainian performer may disappear from the radar, ignore deadlines and point-blank not understand the terms of reference. But!

If we talk about the average temperature in a hospital, Ukrainians are a good choice with their desire to plunge deeply into the task, a good profile education, understandable English and similar personal values ​​(even a sense of humor), we think.

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How our Developers Provide the Project Estimate

In over ten years of existence we’ve picked up a fair share of expert knowledge on many different projects. This makes our team of over 50 developers and systems administrators all highly experienced and dedicated professionals. All of whom possess Brainbench, Retratech, MCP, RHCE and MCSE certification and are backed by an expert, PMI/UPMA certified management team.

Why is this important when it comes to an accurate quotation that genuinely reflects the quality and complexity of work you require? When using inexperienced developers (or those with irrelevant qualifications), they will almost always send back a quote that – when broken down – shows a lack of understanding for the project’s wants and needs in terms of their time and expertise. This is often down to a lack of confidence on the part of the ill-experienced contractor that ultimately means large risks on the part of you – the client. This is true with all kinds of freelancers and contractors that lack the skills and quality to provide the assurances you need to make sure your project comes in on time, on budget and to your exact specifications.

A similar problem can occur with lone freelancers, who may have the relevant skills, but not the time to properly dedicate themselves to a project; once again leading to costs over and above the original estimate.

Conversely, a good developer, working with a strong team can accurately match and compare the skillset of the team to the various aspects of the works. Assigning various packages to the most suitable and able members regardless of experience, common problems that can affect project estimation will always include:

  • Simply extending and building on a previous project, meaning a break in code and unity,
  • Integrating unknown third party services to another API with unreliable updates and patches,
  • Unpredictable system behavior once the changes have been made,
  • Complex custom tasks for niche markets, and the difficulty in finding people with the right experience.

This wide gap in experience and quality is generally the reason behind the discrepancy in estimated costs you may see. Contractor “X” may have offered the cheapest, but have they covered all the needs and outcomes you require, furthermore taking into account the points above. These are the questions you need to ask when faced with widely disparate quotes for the same piece of work.

All of these hurdles can be overcome by choosing a highly qualified, and widely sourced team, who take an individual and flexible approach to every client and every job, to provide your quotation. That’s why, by working closely with you, we at Itera Research will always pick the best and most appropriate methodology; as a result all estimates take into account your bespoke requirements.

 

Sincerely,

Itera Research team

 

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