How to Estimate Software Development Time Accurately?

If you already know all benefits of a good estimate, move right to the practical part!

🤔 Why Do We Need to Estimate Software Projects?

Properly made software estimations are quite useful at the planning stage and further. They allow developing a realistic scale of efforts required on a specific project-phase. This usually includes:

1. The time needed for the development.
2. The number of people who should be involved into the project to deliver it on time and their positions (FrontEnd/BackEnd Developers, QA Engineers and so on).
3. The budget range for the Web- or Mobile App (usually calculated as the development total time multiplied by an hourly rate).

As you can see, a good estimation provides some value to all shareholders. However, creating one isn’t an easy task. Let me explain why.

📉 Why Is It so Difficult to Make a Perfect Estimation?

Despite many call estimations none other than predictions, they’re not the same as unjustified guesses. A correctly prepared estimate is always based on knowledge and experience of the team who is writing it.

However, when you try to estimate time for software development, it sometimes looks like this:

• How much time would it take to ride from point A to point B?
• 2 hours.
• By bicycle.
• 6 hours.
• On a country road.
• 8 hours.
• It’s a moonless night.
• 10 hours.
• It’s snowing.
• 12 hours.
• You haven’t slept for 2 days.
• …

However, it’s quite reasonable that clients shouldn’t pay 3 times more because someone works 3 times slower than an average developer. To prevent this, estimates are usually reviewed and corrected (to be more justified) by a more experienced tech-person (as a rule of thumb, a Senior).

Third, it’s difficult to estimate software projects precisely because sometimes changes come from the client’s side, too. For example, you decided to implement additional functionality or, on the contrary, to remove some pre-planned features.

However, all of the above doesn’t mean that it’s absolutely impossible to make a credible time estimation in software development. Look how this process is organized in our Stormotion HQ!

✅ How Do We Estimate Time for Software Development in Stormotion?

Since after an initial call we’re replying to all estimation requests which we receive - our team has designed a specific workflow for answering them.

Step 1: Preparation

Before estimating software development time we need some input - information that can help us understand the ground features of the project.

Also, we pay special attention to tech challenges that may occur during development - for example, how we’re going to implement machine learning side or integrate non-common APIs.

Pro’ estimation software development tip: if any task takes more than 8 hours we split it into sub-tasks. When making a Rough Estimate we try not to exceed the limit of 30 hours for 1 task.

Eventually, our client receives the final detailed version of the software estimate with the most realistic figures.

P. S. We’re going to dedicate a special article to the Discovery Phase so stay tuned.

⚙️ Top Estimation Software Development Approaches

Now we reach the part of the article with practical tips. This is what you came for, isn’t it?

Despite estimations always have a single aim, ways to reach them can be different.

Approach # 1: Classic One

The first approach is the most common and widely used since it’s pretty fast, easy and understandable. It usually involves 2 people: the one who will work on an app and the one who will do the estimation of software development (preferably a person not related to the project).

Why shouldn’t it be a single person? Despite it may seem quite logical that the estimation is done by someone who will then work on this project (since this person understands own capabilities better than anyone) this is not the best approach.

The whole estimation software development process goes as follows:

1. The Product Owner describes a feature or presents a User Story to developers.
2. Estimators discuss the feature, ask questions to the Product Owner.
3. When the discussion is finished, each developer privately selects the card to estimate the feature.
4. Cards are revealed. If all estimators have chosen the same cards, that figure becomes the estimate. If there are some differences, they’re discussed and then voted again and again until all the estimators don’t pick the same value to estimate the feature.

It’s important to notice, that all the decisions are made by discussing and through consensus - not by averaging all the values after the first round.

Scrum Poker has a few significant advantages which turned it into one of the most popular software development time estimation techniques:

• First, it brings together several experts - each with his unique experience - that helps estimate even the most complex tasks.
• Second, since all the results are achieved through a dialogue, this approach improves the accuracy of the estimates and justifies it.

🎁 Bonus: Ready-Made Software Estimations by the Stormotion Team

Our regular readers and newsletter subscribers know, that each Stormotion’s article about app development is supplemented with an estimation.

As we mentioned it earlier, these estimations are true only for our developers and only for the apps described in the articles. If you want to see the full detailed estimation, click on the name of the app and you’ll be redirected to the appropriate page: