According to G. Rajkumar and Dr.K.Alagarsamy, “most software projects fail completely or partially because a small number of projects meet all their requirements. These requirements can be the cost, schedule, quality, or requirements objectives”.
The most common factors for the failure of the software development project. The International Journal of Computer Science & Applications (TIJCSA), 1(11), 74-77.
In this post, we will talk about why software estimation fails and why WINaTALENT Estimation Service is your straightest way to succeed in software development.
1. Poor Project Scope
As we mentioned in What are Epics and User Story in Agile Methodology, the project timeline and resources are fixed in Agile; what varies is the project scope or deliverables. The resources and timeline are both easily measurable, but on the other hand, the scope of the project is tough to estimate. The problem primarily lies in finding out what is the part of the project and what is not. With misidentification, a mal-cycle of unnecessary activities will takes place, which affects the schedule and the budget.
2. Non-Programmers Doing the Estimation
It is impossible to estimate the development time without the actual programmers. But the whole team needs to be involved in the estimation. For example, if the manager estimates the time of a development process, the project is doomed. Because the managing team does not know the experiences of the development team they are working with.
3. When the Estimation Is Too Optimistic
Optimism is a good thing.
Right?
Well, unfortunately, not always!
Developers think in coding hours. When you are in the coding zone, time passes in mysterious ways! It isn’t easy to assess your own time. Programmers tend to forget about the softer sides of the development process, such as project management, requirements collection process, discussions with colleagues, hardware problems, etc.
4. Inadequate Discussions of the Project
In software development projects, sometimes there needs to be over communication between the development team and other teams to ensure the problems are analyzed entirely and correctly.
5. Using all of the Estimated time
The programmers are primarily unaware of Parkinson’s law, which states “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”.
If a developer estimates five days to finish a task, they will take five days. They are perfectionists. Any code can get improved. Even if they take three days to complete a job, they will spend the remaining time tweaking the code or doing other activities. Hence, the delivery time will get worse when the estimation time is too long.
6. More extensive Development Team Equals Quicker Development
More developers do not mean a faster development process.
To simply put it, a 100-day project will not get completed by 100 developers in 1 day. Unnecessary large teams mainly increase the complexity of a situation. Every detail and change needs to get discussed with the whole team. This will cause communication and management problems.
7. Change of Project Scope
The scope change is very typical in software development projects. But still it is the most annoying.
The project owners might not have the information to understand how much a change in scope affects development time. Sometimes because of sudden requests, the developers need to redo a project partially or start from scratch.
8. Fixed Estimation
Project estimation needs to be dynamic. There should be continuous updates as the development moves forward.
Programmers often believe they can make up for the time they lost. But that’s not possible, and it only causes more setbacks. Therefore, updated the estimation regularly.
9. Forgetting about Testing Time
In general, 50% of the development time should be spend on testing. The developers can not adequately test their code. Therefore, involvement of the testing team in the estimation is necessary.
So What Is WINaTALENT’s Estimation Solution:
WINaTALENT is a specialist in Agile estimation and techniques. Our estimation takes place in three levels:
High-level estimation
High-level estimation is the initial level of estimation. This section specifies the epics and user stories, which is one of the most complex parts of the estimation. We assess your idea and its technical requirements.
Concentrated and precise estimation
After user stories, With the Agile estimation techniques, our team assigns story points to backlog items to determine the size and estimate effort. The people who work on your estimation include a back-end specialist, a front-end specialist, a DevOps, a QA expert, and a designer.
Timeline estimation
We consider three factors for timeline estimation:
- Development’s team experience, seniority, and velocity
- Project scope and complexity
- Risk factors
In time estimation, we break the software project’s scope into epics and user stories, estimate the needed effort through Agile, and determine the timeline.
WINaTALENT provides an estimation document based on the information we mentioned above.
This document provides time estimation, cost estimation, effort estimation, and team-building strategies. These aspects summed up all you can expect from a software or app development estimation document.
The estimation document also provides a full report on the costs of the project and compares them in different regions of the world:
- The first region is where you, as a prospect, live
- The second pricing is on areas with lower rates, such as Middle East
- The third data we provide gives you the WINaTALENT rates (as a client, you have the option to outsource your project to us entirely after we finish your estimation document)
WINaTALENT does not add all of the project’s features in the estimation document. The project’s structures and specific guide to different phases are in the project proposal’s software or app development project.
Read the review on WINaTALENT Software Project Estimation Service.
Estimation is a crucial stage in any project. You deserve to get it right and accurately.
WINaTALENT allows you to have the best estimation possible.