Estimating Software Development Costs?

Stu Lalison asks: "I'm an MBA student (but I'm not evil, I promise!) and am working on a business plan that involves having some custom software written for a handheld computer. I've done some research into estimating the costs involved in software production, but when estimating the time involved in writing the software, it usually says 'judge on past projects.' I'm not a programmer, so I don't have any past projects to judge on. I'm wondering if the Slashdot community can give me some ballpark figures on how long it takes a professional programmer to code different parts of a program. I've identified 3 needs of my application: a front-end user interface, a database w/ search function (of about 10 megabytes of data), and integration of both of these into a (currently existing) commercial mapping application. It seems like these aren't huge tasks, but getting (even a rough) handle on their actual complexity will help me greatly. Also, how much development time would be required to port an application like this from, say, a Palm OS device to a 3G handset? Thanks in advance!"

Comments

Cost Estimate

[the eric conspiracy]

it usually says 'judge on past projects.'

There is the clue to your answer. Hire someone who has done this sort of thing to give you an estimate.

Or you might try to go to a contractor and see if they will give you an estimate.

Re:Quick guidelines

[Maple Syrup]

Regarding #3:

"You need to double the amount of time the folks from #2 give you as an estimate".

IMHO, you need to double the amount of time and convert to the next-higher units. Because what you think is a "1 hour job" really will take you two days, and the "One week of coding" really will take you two months.

DAMHIK

Re:Rough Estimation

[Bitsy Boffin]

I hope the poster doesn't take your answer seriously. There is nowhere near enough information given to make ANY sort of judgement on how long it is going to take to do anything let alone finish it. We don't even know what the system is supposed to DO (asides probably something to do with mapping).

How do you know what the system you are interfacing with looks like, what protocols you're going to have to use, maybe you have to invent them, maybe you're gonna have to figure out some communication method between them.

Perhaps there is a framework for buiulding the GUI already there meaning programming takes 2 weeks, or maybe you have to do everything from scratch and programming is going to take a year.

As for the database, you don't know anything about the data - can't even begin to imagine where you got 2 weeks from.