Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How do I know what to budget for my project?
A reliable budget is based on an accurate cost analysis. You can develop this by identifying the team roles, the cost per role and the total number of hours needed, or we can provide that to you free of charge before you even engage us. Even better, we can also find you similar projects to benchmark against. We can also help you evaluate what you already have in place that might shortcut the process.
Once we know all of the project components, we can develop a time estimate. We can also fit into existing budgets by either adding or subtracting from the requirements. Finally, we can put you in touch with others who have run similar projects so that you learn directly from them what went well and what, if anything, they would change about the project scope.
Q. What will we need to get started?
Four things:
- A clear project overview including goals, the primary feature set, target users and any examples of similar solutions.
- A basic software specification that includes some user personas, applicable user stories, time frame and estimated budget.
- Mock-ups which represent functionalities on each application screen, along with a brief descriptions.
- Specification written with help from a knowledgeable developer as well as any wireframes, APIs and other integration details, required features, optional features and assumptions.
Q. What are good points to keep in mind to define the project scope?
Spend some time on the mock-ups so that you can test information architecture, navigation and features. It’s always more expensive to do this after programming has started, to invest the time now to save a lot of funds later. Along with mock-ups, it’s important to generate user stories, or how you anticipate a customer persona would interact with the completed software. Start with the fill-in-the-blank sentence ““As a _[what kind of user]____, I want ____[do what?]______ so that ___[desired outcome]___ occurs because ___________________.” By meticulously completing that sentence and creating needed mockups, the project will be scoped accurately.
Q. Do you provide references?
Absolutely. We can often put you in touch with someone in a similar position to you who has worked on a similar project to the one you have in mind. Just let us know what you are planning, and we’ll find the closest available match!
