Once you come up with the idea of creating a software product and have proof of concept, you can start thinking about how much it takes to bring it to life. There is much work to be done before your product hits the market, but the question I want to discuss in this article is how much time it will take to develop the software.
To start with, you should decide whether you want an on-site development team who will work as a part of your company or whether you want to outsource.
Once you have decided who will develop your product, you want to know when you can release it. There are several ways of estimating development time.
As a client, you would like to know the approximate date of your product’s release; for this, you should understand the scope of work. Also, estimating time will help you to calculate the budget and will give you a transparent outlook of the work that should be done.
The development time consists not only of the scope of work, but you should also consider risk buffers and time-eaters, both of which are hard to foresee and unable to control. Time-eaters can refer to communication issues between team members and people who are unable to work. Risk buffers refer to any stumbling points that need time to be solved.
Various factors influence the time frame of developing the project.
First is the type of project. The more complex and unique the project is, the more time it needs in order to be built.
The second thing to consider is whether you have to migrate large amounts of data from one system to another.
The number of features, complexity in functionality and difficulty in implementation also dictate the development time.
The time frame will also depend on is you are building a unique UI/UX solution. This process takes extensive research, analyses, design and implementation and does not utilize as many existing solutions.
The consistency of your requirement also plays a significant role. The better view of your project you have, the more precise requirements you get.
Last but not least, there is the complexity of integrating the new software within your business system. Some integrations are easy, but others require more time and effort.
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