Commerce Server Blog

Software development effort estimation is a process of predicting most realistic efforts required to develop a product/application. The effort estimation can be passed as inputs to find schedule, budget, team structure, etc. You can opt bottom-up or top-down estimation model or function point or use case analysis estimations but finally by doing this exercise, we are coming to some realistic figures (not exact) which drives the decision of taking the project or not or negotiating scope reduction with client as per limited schedule, effort or cost. For past few years, I have been doing many projects effort estimation. In this blog post, I am trying to record few dev. units (but not limited to) to give more concentration while doing effort estimation. Trust me, all project estimates are different (some fools think all projects are same) but few of the components can be consider as same. Ecommerce application development is so volatile and difficult as client wants or expects something different than their competitors so that they can retain or get customers.

Some of the key dev. units, where efforts will be more (than expected) a special consideration to be taken in ecommerce application effort estimation.

• Efforts to incorporate Application blocks like security (Authentication & Authorization), data access, logging, exception handling, etc.
• Integration entities
• Payment
• Tax
• backend systems like ERP, CRM, etc.
• Browser support
• Performance Testing
• Usability testing
• Data cleaning and porting.
• Image and flash/silver light objects creation
• Capacity Planning
• Warranty support
• Knowledge transfer from business analytics to developers to support engineers.
• Workflows (post order processing)
• Prototyping
• Reports & Site Analytics

If your company has any metrics then start comparing the actual efforts with these dev. units mentioned above and for most of them actual effort will exceed than planned effort.Client will not agree if you estimate more hours to these items but at the end due to external dependencies we will end up loosing schedule if not effort.

As per my knowledge & experience here are the top 10 risks any ecommerce project has and as a project manager a special attention has to be taken to mitigate them.

1. Development schedule.
2. Infrastructure related risks (as commerce server application interacts with different third party or backend systems).
3. Resource Utilization (productivity).
4. Resource Availability (As commerce server is a niche skill – it is difficult to get experience resource availability as per delivery schedule).
5. Planning and monitoring (many teams, many communications and difficult for PM to manager and monitor the project).
6. Requirements & Scope Stability
7. Staffing Level in Key Areas (many companies follow a specific pyramid and sometimes it may not work).
8. Team sprit & motivation.
9. Resource ramp-up time & Knowledge transfer.
10. Internal company policies  (for port enablement – 2 days, security approval – 3 days, etc).

If you have any questions or suggestions, drop me an email – kanth@ravikanth.net. In future, I will be sharing some of the commerce server specific estimation techniques.