When an entrepreneur/business looks for new software development, two questions immediately start coming to their mind. “How much?” and “How long?” are the two questions that decide the rest of the project’s budget and completion period.
If you plan to contact a software development company, you will be given several options and schemes. But, what can influence the total expenses when developing software? How much do you save up for the software design expenses? If you want to understand more about the factors involved, then you know what to do, keep reading.
But, let’s take a little look first at what you need to know about the timeline and effort into the project.
How do effort and time differ?
Normally, the first questions asked by budding entrepreneurs looking to make their way into the development field is to do with “costs?” and “how long it will take?”. But, unfortunately, it can be a tricky one to address at times.
Of course, time and effort are the answer, but how it is calculated is the main reason why this becomes complicated. For example, 30 hours of effort can be put forth in 7 hours by having 4 IT professionals divide the work into one week of a project.
It is still not easy to calculate because these variables will change each day and for each project, hence the final cost of the project. The effort could be calculated in many ways, and it may differ for different companies.
For example, the effort of a professional may be calculated according to the time spent on the project, years of experience, and the quality of work. If you understand these variables, you now have a rough idea about the total expense of developing software.
So next time you are in talk with a software development company, you know what to ask. For example, if they say that the job will be done in 2 weeks, ask them whether they charge based on the time taken or for two weeks effort put into the project?
What are the vital factors affecting the development cost?
Three main factors affect software development pricing:
● Type of project
● Size of project
● Development team size
Type of project
The following are the list of typical software development:
New Software development– Brand new software is developed, with custom development.
Software modification– Improving an existing one.
Software integration– Custom code to include the ability to integrate the present software into other processes. So think of taking an existing app package like office and intergrating it with Sage.
Web development– Custom web-based software development
Each of these projects has a different team setup and needs an additional development effort. Read more about software development team structures.
Size of project
So how big is the project you’re working on?. There’s a significant correlation between the complexity of a project and its size. Project sizes normally fall into the following simple categories:
● Small
● Medium
● Large
● Enterprise
Development team size
The next step is to think about the team size and determine what is appropriate. All projects require at least three roles—a developer, project manager, and QA tester.
Though the required number of professionals may be the same, the effort/resources they put in may differ.
These factors are crucial for the success of a software development project and when you are looking for a software development team/agency, make sure you ask the right questions to them, such as the total time taken to complete the project, the number of professionals they need, and the effort they will put into the project.
