ProjectCodeMeter
Estimating a Future project schedule and cost for internal budget planning
When
planning a software project, you need to verify that project
development is within the time and budget constraints available to
your organization or allocated to the project, as well as making sure
adequate profit margin remains, after deducting costs from the target price tag.
Step by step instructions:
1.
Create a project folder with a collection of files with similar functionality needed in your future
project. Usually take files from older projects of yours, or downloaded Open Source projects from one of the open source repository websites. Note the code DOESN'T need to be compilable, so no need to fix any errors or create an actual IDE project or build scripts, nor adding any auto generated files, and files which
functionality is covered by code libraries you already have.
2. Make
sure you don't have any open ProjectCodeMeter report files in your
spreadsheet or browser, as it prevents these files from being updated.
3. Select this folder into the Project Folder textbox (make sure NOT to select "Differential comparison").
4. Select the Settings
describing the project and the tools available to your development
team, as well as the actual average gross Price Per Hour
cost of 1 developer (including salaries, taxes, benefits, office rent,
support staff costs, and so on), easiest way to get this ballpark figure is by
taking your entire company expenses per hour, divide by the amount of
simultaneously developed projects then divide by amount of developers
for this project.
5. Click the "Analyze" button. When analysis finishes, Time and Cost results will be shown at the bottom right
summary screen
It
is always recommended to plan the budget and time according to average
programmer time (as measured by ProjectCodeMeter) without modification,
since even for faster development teams productivity may vary due to
personal and environmental circumstances, and development team
personnel may change during the project development lifecycle.
In
case you still want to factor for your development team speed, and your
development team programmers are faster or slower than the average (measured previously using Productivity Sizing),
divide the resulting time and cost by the factor of this difference,
for example if your development team is twice as fast than an average
programming team, divide the time and cost by 2. If your team is half
the speed of the average, then divide the results by 0.5 to get the
actual time and cost of development for your particular team.
However,
beware not to overestimate the speed of your development team, as it
will lead to budget and time overflow.
In your final report, Use the ProjectCodeMeter Time and Cost results as the Development component
of budget, add the current market average costs for the
other relevant components shown in the diagram above (or if risking factoring for your specific organization, use your organizations average costs). The resulting price should
be the estimated budget and time for the project.
Optionally,
You can add the minimal profit percentage making the sale worthwhile to
obtain the bottom margin for a price quote you produce to
your clients.
For calculating the top margin for a price quote, use the
process Estimating a Future project schedule and cost for producing a price quote.