Making your software: Step 3 - Ball Park Estimates

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Priya, our fictional software entrepreneur from the previous chapters on this series has a dream to make “Designly” a software platform for interior designs. She has followed our suggestions on writing down her features in the specific format that software developers love as step 1 in her journey to make her software. She has then gone through the methodical approach of finding possible software developers using a simple yet effective process using the method laid out in step 2 - find software developer She now has a shortlisted software developers who are likely to be a good fit in terms of skills, capability and communication. Now is the big question of money,

“How much will it cost?”

But costing a software development project is not as simple as just saying oh these are the materials, this is how much it will be. That is because there are a multitude of unknowns in a software project. If you take Priya’s situation you’ll know what I mean. She only has an idea of software and some features. Roughly she is looking for a software that will:

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a) Let users try out interior design in their room.

b) Take pictures of those designs and ask for feedback from friends and family.

But is that all? If you dig even a little bit further a hundred new features starts coming up that are essential. For example:

c) users will need registration, password management, trial access, etc.

d) there will be a need for a payments

e) priya will need administration interface for managing her users and also for stats.

f) ….

And we haven’t really even scratched the surface yet. For example, how does a user do the first feature of trying out interior design? Will there be little furniture pictures that users will be able to arrange? Will the user have ability to change colors of the walls and furniture? Will there be a library of furniture pictures? …

Each of these questions and their answers lead to features and work which leads to change in the cost. The actual requirement analysis is by itself a big part of the software development work and it takes time and effort to do. So for any sane software company it just doesn’t make sense to go through the whole process without getting paid or without some assurance of getting the full project. But on the other side Priya needs to have at least a rough idea about the costing of the project - will it be a few thousand or a few hundred thousand? And the answer to this predicament is

The ballpark estimate

An estimate that can be wrong in the actual number when all the requirement is done and dusted but which is at least in the same order of magnitude. So it’s like a software developer saying “hey, Priya, your software will cost something around 50K” and the actual final cost might be 80K, but it wouldn’t be 500K for example.

For any software company with experience and skill, coming up with a ball park is relatively easy. It will probably require some effort - maybe a day or two (and even a week) of going over what’s known and trying to guess the effort. But it’s far better than spending weeks on scoping and estimation work without knowing for sure if the project will be awarded to them or not.

So most software companies are OK in the little investment of coming up with a ball park number.

The art of estimating the ballpark number

Ballpark numbers are very rough cost estimates based on the specification you give to the developers. This number helps you figure out costs and plan your funds. To get a reliable ballpark you’ll need to spend some time with the developer to go through your concept, answer their questions etc. And obviously you can only do that with only a few.

Most software companies will guide you through the ballpark estimation process by asking questions. But from your side you need to take some action too to make sure that the right questions are asked and that certain concepts are clear to the software developers. Here’s our list questions that we make sure we ask and clarify:


  • What is the closest thing like your software currently available? Can you give us a link?

  • Do you have any preference on colors and themes? Can you give us an example site/app?

  • Where do you expect your users to use the software the most - on their browsers or their mobile devices?

  • Do you want a mobile app too? If so do you want them on both iOS and Android? Why?

  • Tell us in your own words how your users will use the software.

  • Tell us in your own words how you expect to manage the software, users, accounting, etc.

  • Tell us about your potential users. Would your users be computer savvy? Would they have good internet connections? Would they have good devices?

  • What would be the language preference of your users? Do you expect your software to be multi-lingual?

  • What’s your “drop dead” deadline? When do you need your software by to survive as a business?

  • If you were to choose just one feature, what would be that feature?

  • Going forward what is your expected cost of maintaining the software?

  • Who is going to maintain the software? What sort of skills does she have?