The Antropy Software Development Project Management Process

Posted by Paul on November 10, 2015

Estimating and quoting can be one of the hardest things in software development, even for the most experienced developers. The problem is that to produce an accurate estimate requires a significant amount of time, and if we spent that sort of time on every quote request we receive, we wouldn't have any time left in the day to do the actual work of writing code. 

The solution is the Antropy Project Estimating/Quoting Process:

  1. First we'll listen. We'll ask questions until we really understand what it is you need. Sometimes this is different to what you think you need from a technical perspective so we'll try and uncover the underlying business reason, the why.

  2. Next, once we have enough information, we'll give you a ball-park price range. This can be a pretty large range, but where you project finally comes in will probably between these depending on further clarification of the specification. Often we can give this pretty quickly and without having to involve a developer. We call this our Quick Estimate.

  3. If your budget is within the price range and you're serious about the project, we can now spend serious developer time breaking the project down in to tasks of just a few hours each. We'll end up with a detailed list of technical steps that must be done for the project to be considered complete. We can now add up all the time required to arrive at our final quote for the project. We call this our Detailed Quote.

Although it sounds simple, you would be surprised at the number of companies and developers who try their best to do a detailed quote for every lead that comes in to their company but get this wrong because they can't afford to spend the required time on it. Often they'll underquote (as is the usual developer bias) which actually ends up being bad for the client when the developer has to come back for more budget or is unable to complete the work.

The Antropy Estimating/Quoting Process makes sure that the client gets a good idea of costs at a very early stage and an accurate, realistic quote before a project goes ahead.

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