Estimation Service
Our current offering is "Estimation Service for Software Projects".
Although we have arrived in cyberspace with the intention to assist businesses
and software development communities in software development and support but
that's our longer term goal, our focus at the moment is providing for an
estimation service that is truly best in class and is offered to the entire
community. The service is available in multiple flavors. The basic service is
offered free to all. Please check our services here.
Following are the top reasons why you should choose
us for this service.
If you are an IT Services company then you could be
facing one of the following challenges.
a)
Generating more business - IT
Marketing & Presales is always in a never ending cycle of bidding for fresh
software development or support projects or renewing existing support
contracts. One of the basic exercises before one can bid for a project is the estimation
of effort and schedule. Since the measure of estimation expertise required to
crack bids is very high and since attrition affects talent pool all the time, one
can only hope to match it either by continuously hiring the best estimation
talent or by continuously training the existing and if you don't then you
suffer peaking out of expertise levels in your company resulting in lower future
bid crack rates.
Constant hiring of talent
is not an all time cost effective approach due to the various reasons such as
non availability of skilled estimation resources in the local market causing
you to invest more money to get them from remote locations, limited budget, economy
downturns, etc.
Internal training can help
to an extent but there is a cap on how much you can improve the talent in
house. Training is like charging a battery with external power source. There is
always a limit on how much charge can a battery consume. There is a point after
which more training doesn't help. Don't let this talent saturation creep into
your companies.
We have the solution for
this that is right on the target. Our estimation experts are the industry best
estimation talents who have joined with us over internet to provide for their
services. They may be working as Project Managers, Business Analysts or
Architects in various IT companies across the globe but their expertise is
available virtually through us to work out estimates for your software
requirements. And since the basic effort estimation service is free of charge,
it is a clear win for you. On one hand, you will cut costs by avoiding fresh
hiring exercise and on the other you could use the estimation figures submitted
by us to balance out the figures that your own experts have produced. This 3rd
party view, that we provide, will prove a boon to you as you will be able to
produce more realistic estimates in your biddings.
b) Productivity Metrics
Generation & Maintenance - It is sometimes a big challenge for SEPG or
quality departments of IT companies to come out with realistic productivity
figures at organization level. This is due to the fact that most of the times,
estimation talent within the company do not determine software size first
before coming out with effort estimates. Since software size is not known, it
is difficult to come out with productivity measure in a consistent way.
We help organizations here
by calculating software size for the requirements they post to us, in terms of
Function Points. We calculate counts for applications under development
(development count), change requests and enhancements required for applications
under support (maintenance count), and the projects already in production
(application counts). SEPG / Quality departments of the IT companies can
completely rely on us to do this exercise for them for each of their projects.
Function Points when calculated in a standard way such as the one suggested by
IFPUG can really provide for consistent size determination even when calculated
by different experts.
If you are a business looking out for vendors who
could provide IT solutions to support your business processes or support your
existing solutions then your biggest challenge is to select the vendor with the
right experience levels.
Our experts can help here
by going through your IT requirements and provide you a 3rd party
view of the size of the projects in terms of Function Points. Effort estimates
in terms of 'Person Days' will also be provided based on average IT
productivity figures per FP. Once your view about the solution size is
solidified based on our figures and your internal calculations, you could then
select the vendor with more confidence. The vendor who is publishing the
estimates that are closer to your expectations is definitely experienced. The
next & final selection point would obviously be the cost and the quality
assessment.
If you are a Project Management consulting firm
then you could be facing challenges in terms of meeting growing demand from
your end customers in the area of Software Estimation & Planning.
Again, you could think
about outsourcing some of the work to our network at a reduced rate.
Our experts deploy industry
best estimation practices to work out project estimates such as Function Point
Analysis, Use Case Point Analysis, WBS, COCOMO etc.
We try to maximize the estimation
talent exposure to your projects by deploying up to 3 experts in parallel to
work out the estimates. This clearly gives a lot of leverage to your native
estimation expertise.
We constantly research
this area to come up with ever modern and effective estimation techniques.
Please check out our 'Research'
section regularly for notes and small articles that we keep posting about the
subject.
Give us a chance to work
with you and check the difference we make. We believe that you will only gain
by giving us a chance. Later, if you like our services, you can choose us as
your Estimation Partners.
The advantage of making us
your partner is that the paid component of Estimation Service will be available
without charge to you. Do write to us at 'support@econcinnity.com' if you want
to partner with us.
There are other services
on the web who offer 'Free Quote' kind of services but there are differences
when compared with us.
Ø
We run this
service for the entire community while others offer it only for their potential
customers.
Ø
They usually
have limited estimation talent pool while we have people from all over the
globe constantly joining us from all directions.
Ø
We provide
estimates for software projects of all kinds, viz, EAI, Legacy Migration,
Custom Software Development, Maintenance & Support of Custom Solutions, Product
Development, Product Support, etc. targeted for various markets such as
Banking, Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing, Retail, Distribution, Utilities,
Internet, etc. Most of other online services we checked so far provide
quotations for website development only. We, therefore, have a wider scope.
We anticipate that a few people
might feel reluctant to submit their requirements to us due to various reasons,
such as
Ø
"Non
Disclosure Agreements" (NDA) with their end customers.
Ø
Fear of loss
of project due to project requirements leak to us.
In such cases, our
response is.
Ø
If you have
signed an NDA with the end customer then you should not submit the requirements
to us until you have established us as your Estimation Partners and your NDA
allows you to share documents with your partners. Do write to us or leave a
message at the site with your contact information if you wish to establish us
as your Estimation Partners.
Ø
If you fear
that the leak of project requirements information could lead to loss of project
then be rest assured, we are only supporting you in your estimation exercise
and we will never use the information for our benefit. We after all need you as
our friends who trust us and there by grow our trust network. But, just for the
peace of your mind, delete the project originating sources information from the
requirements documents before submitting to us. We only need pure requirements
to work out the estimation. Trust us.
We intend to adopt 'Virtual
Delivery Model' in future for all our service lines. Associates from all over
the world are welcome here. We want to grow this platform into a vibrant
community of skilled IT resources.
Current list of offered
services are listed here. Please
read it to understand how you may 'Engage Us'
for doing Estimations for you. Estimation services are available in different
flavors.
The list also shows the
planned roadmap for 2009.
Although security
sensitive work areas are not offered currently, the security plan we have for
future is enumerated in our 'FAQ' entries, here.
Updated On: 2/13/2009 11:10 AM
