Cake Development Corporation

Most companies dealing with client project development are going to need an effective means of estimating and reporting on work. 

Some developers underestimate their work. This can be a result of a number of situations:

* Ignorance of legacy systems and current implementation

* Misunderstanding requirements

* Willingness to "prove themselves" by quoting a lower number of hours

* Lack of experience with project estimation

The result can be the undertaking of a client project, with an understanding that it will take a specified amount of time, and having the project require more hours than initially estimated.

This is a highly undesirable outcome. It means a loss of money for you, as a development company, it means an unhappy client, and it leads to demotivation within the development team.

On the other hand, estimation of projects can result in overestimation. This can again be the result of a misunderstanding of requirements and also a lack of experience for the estimation of projects. The result can be a client not undertaking your company to develop a project.

What can you do as a development company to generate closer estimates, hook the client, and keep both your managers and your developers happy? I offer some tips based on my experience.

First, understand the clients requirements. Read over what the client has supplied a number of times so that you have a solid understanding of the provided information. Spend a little time researching the projects interest area, demographic, and gain a rudimentary understanding of the business goals of your client. If you have any doubts, get in touch with your client and request more information. Its not crucial that you respond with figures immediately, asking questions shows that you have an attention to detail, and that you want to understand the clients project better. This in itself will not only help with estimation, but further build your client relationship.

Second, "divide and conquer". Separate the tasks into smaller subtasks. This affords you the ability to estimate on each subtask. The result is an estimation for the whole project that takes into consideration smaller components of the system that are harder to conceptualise without a detailed breakdown.

Third, check yours and your teams development history. Have you solved a similar problem in the past? Check not only the code available for this implementation, but the effort that it took to implement. This generates a more realistic estimate for this component of your project breakdown. 

Finally, it is not possible to generate an exact method for building a project estimate. Over time, and with experience your project estimates will become more accurate, and your ability to break up requirements and communicate effectively with clients will result in a better result overall.

Best of luck with your project estimates!