Hi,
I am building an ASP.NET application.
Here I need to provide time and cost estimate for this application to my boss.
Would someone guide me how to proceed on this? Please refer few good tutorials /links to carry-out these calculations.
Thanks and Regards. Bhavna.
Such a thing does not exist, that is based on your requirements. The technology you use should have almost no factor in the timing
Making reliable estimates is quite tough, at least for me. What helps most is experience - e. g. if I have done app X in time Y, then doing app XZ might take YZ.
If I need to make an estimate for a project which I never have done before even not a similiar one I usually talk to more experienced developers and ask them what might be the main difficulties etc. and then I ask myself how long it would take me based on my current work experience and skills. So, after all it really depens on your personal skills / the skills of your team members and their experience.
On large projects I try to break it down in the smallest pieces, then estimate each of them, add them, then think about how much boilerplate code must be written, how long it takes e. g. to get the enviroment set (setting up server etc.).
I know that are very vague hints on how to do this, but imho your best bet is asking some experienced dev to help you with this task.
Time estimates are not something that a single formula can provide you. Time will depend on your experience, the project, and a number of "intangibles". Breaking down a large project into pieces, estimating each piece, totaling them and then adding a percentage for error will get you close. Cost is then a simple matter of (time * hourly rate) + cost of any 3rd party provided resources.
Don't take this the wrong way (I'm not trying to be mean), but if you're at a point in your career where you can't estimate how long something will take I would question whether you should be doing it at all. You should at least have an idea of how long it takes you to do a simple page/class/widget and apply that experience to your current task(s).
Estimate can be accurate, when it's given in form of "the project will take between x and y months and will cost between q and z".
A very precise estimate, like "the project will take 5.4 months and will cost $54.721" will never, ever be accurate.
And, estimation sucks on so many levels. Include all your risks and you will be too expensive for the client. Be overoptimistic and you'll loose money :-(
you need to list tasks in your application(Note: You should try to break down tasks in such a way that one task should not contain 40 hours more, I mean If you think this task is taking moretime you need to break down in different tasks) and put estimated hours against each task.
and then..
Cost = Totalhours * rate
I think this is simplest solution to fine time estimation and cost