Estimation Methodology
Software project estimation is a very time consuming process and takes highly skilled individuals to come up with the estimated effort for various implementations.
Most
software development organizations do not have the time and resources to produce effective estimates that justify the cost of the project and cover all the details of the
implementation.
We have spent several years refining our estimation process because we believe that the key to successful delivery is detailed and accurate project estimation. During early years of our operation we started using the function point estimation methodology to create excel based estimates.
While these estimates were quite effective, they still lacked a lot of details and we ran into issues during the
implementation and testing phases. Over the years we
continued to refine our estimates and started producing a much more detailed proposal with function point analysis as still the base for the estimate. These detailed estimation documents were definitely very helpful in ensuring successful and timely deliveries. However they posed a different set of challenges due to the amount of time and resources it took to produce such detailed estimates.
We are the only company that has taken software estimation so seriously.
We funded our sister organization Intelekit Corporation to automate the estimation process and build a tool that can produce highly detailed and effective estimates in very little time. The product that was born out of this effort is called Quick FPA. We use Quick FPA to create estimates for all our software projects.
We have seen a dramatic increase in sales and customer satisfaction since the implemantation of Quick FPA within our organization.
Our estimates use the benchmarks set at the organization level, helping us produce consistent, accurate and detailed estimates in the fastest time across the entire industry. The estimates provide a complete breakdown of the setup, implementation and testing effort, justifying the total cost of the project.
