We are now doing development in Lotus Notes environment.
Slowiy we are using Lotus Notes for development of system for various business process and they are becoming complex day by day. Eg we have systems with interface with other non -lotus notes systems or systems with many agents etc…
We need to know how the effort estimation is done for Lotus NOtes applications .
Is there any standard way for calculating the development cost for Lotus Notes appliction.
Thanks
Subject: what criteria should be taken into account to estimate the effort required for Lotus Notes database application development
This might help you get started.
You need:
Hours/Days - to get design details
Hours/Days - to design the db
Hours/Days - to develop documentation
Hours/Days - to test (usually takes longer than actual design)
Hours/Days - to update design based on test results
Hours/Days - to move to production and follow-up
You will need to add to time for reviews during the design phase. End Users usually know what they want; however, they seldom know what it LOOKS LIKE.
Hope this helps!
Subject: what criteria should be taken into account to estimate the effort required for Lotus Notes database application development
This might help get you started.
You will need:
Hours/Days - gathering details for design
Hours/Days - amount of time to design
Hours/Days - testing (usually more time than designing the db
Hours/Days - moving to production and follow-up
You will need to add time for reviews during the design phase. End users using know what they want; however, they seldom know what it LOOKS LIKE.
Subject: what criteria should be taken into account to estimate the effort required for Lotus Notes database application development
One of my colleagues estimate by the following method:She first makes an initial estimation based upon gut feeling. Then she calculates the final cost based upon this formula
developmentCost = 2πr+r
Where r is the initial estimation.
This formula is based upon that you will try to implement the obvious solution, but will always meet some kind of technological problem, to solve this you need to program yourself around the problem, this is calculated by the 2πr part.
Joke aside, there is no single way to calculate development cost. Cost is dependant upon many things, not only the number of “Use cases”. It’s for instance dependant upon your software development method. A lot of Notes applications are developed in close colaboration with customer / end users. This alows developement without a detailed specification. The method often creates good results, but leads often to higher cost. Some users/ cusomers are more difficult than others, this will again lead to higher cost.
My best advice is to try to divide applications into a few parts, and let your developers (that know they work and cusomers) estimate how much time they need to implement each part. Try to use the developers that will actualy do the work, using experienced developers for estimation and novices for development is a bad idea.
Then based upon your knowledge of your developers (Do they tend to underestimate?) I would modify the sum with a percentage.
Finaly you should based upon your knowledge about the level of bureaucracy in your organisation I would add a premium for project adminstration, test, documentation and risk (For instance 100%, and I’m not joking)
Subject: RE: what criteria should be taken into account to estimate the effort required for Lotus Notes database application development
(For instance 100%, and I’m not joking)
I’ll second that. Domino Designer allows for very rapid application development. My experience has been that development time (that is, the time I spend at my computer actually building things) is dwarfed by the amount of time it takes for users/customers to decide what they want, which is in turn insignificant compared to the amount of time it takes them to get around to taking a look at the finished product and actually working with it and confirming that what we’ve given them works as promised and fits their needs. I’ve lost track of the number of applications I’ve built that have taken hours to build and months to reach final user acceptance.