How much does it cost to make a Web, iOS or Android app and how long does it take?
Estimation is a part of the engineering process, whether you are building a small mobile app or a full scale enterprise class system. But it’s not as easy as you might think. Sometimes it takes years of experience and expertise to get it right.
When you start the estimation process, there will always be a truckload of questions that would hit your mind. Am I doing it right? Am I overestimating or underestimating? How much contingency should I include?
One way of doing it, even in the traditional Software Engineering process models, is to feed the known parameters into an estimation system or model to get a rough idea. I remember once having created a similar Lines of Code estimator tool in Python as a pet project.
This site is an awesome tool for reference purposes. Remember, it’s highly unusual for any kind of estimate to be 100% accurate, no matter which tools you use. But when you use a combination of tools like this, you could at least have a range of reference to base your estimation on, and if nothing else, it would boost your own confidence in the estimation process.
Also remember, if you are estimating for a corporate or business client or a large commercial project it would always be beneficial to adopt the standard Software Engineering techniques for estimation and always remember to add in a contingency plan (Things go wrong you know).
