How will IT development estimates be determined?

1. Duration

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There will be a completion deadline that the boss needs. Alternatively, you may be asking to know how long it will take without setting a specific deadline. If there is a specific completion deadline, you can discuss the amount. The reason is that most large developers don't take time off without a project, so they rarely start the project right away. Therefore, if you have enough time to start, it is recommended to leave an inquiry with several developers for an estimate at a time when you don't need to start immediately. If you have a project with a limited period of time, there is little reason for the developer to request a large amount. If you have to produce it on a tight schedule, most of the developers' overtime pay and the risk of not meeting the delivery date will increase the price significantly.

2. Features

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What many owners find difficult is the function. It's often not clear that you want to make a product at a certain level, which is similar to making a computer estimate. If you play a high-end game or work on a video, there is a section where the price multiplies when the function starts to gain, just as the price of the computer increases several times.

The sections in which prices multiply are largely as follows:.

Landing Page (10 or fewer static websites)
Around KRW 1 million for freelancers or very small developers (use template code)

Based on the level of design provided by the top developers, it is produced based on KRW 5 to KRW 20 million (a separate design team will start working on BI, design system design, etc.)

- For developers who design award-quality products, an estimate of more than 20 million won is also incurred

Shopping malls or content-managing websites (including CMS or custom management systems)
For freelancers or small developers, it is made with CMS, including WordPress for less than 5 million won.

If the data size covered is large, it is often over 10 million, even if the CMS tool is used.

In the case of shopping malls, design costs and setup costs are separately received when developing using shopping mall builders such as Cafe 24 and Six Shop.

If the CMS tool is not available, the price can increase from at least 10 million won to 100 million won if it is a start-up product that requires interaction with existing servers or continuous functionality.

mobile application development
If you have to create a new startup product, it is not easy to create and operate only a mobile application, and the price starts at least tens of millions of won because you have to create a website and a management system in the form of a package.

If mobile applications are developed with existing homepages or systems, most of them can be developed within 100 million, but if there are various development issues, such as platform and device versions, more than 100 million will occur.

There is a cost difference between making it hybrid and native development. Hybrid is generally cheaper because it is compatible with Android and iOS with one source code, but if there is room for complex behavior by platform, it is safe to develop native. Instead, the cost is often at least 1.5 times or more.

For example, if there is no interactive manager and only a mobile app comes out (simple games or convenience applications without special servers), it can be developed at a minimum of several million won.

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3. Design

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It is difficult to say that the price varies depending on the good design and the bad design, as each president has a different level of design he wants, and the criteria for which design is good or bad are different. From the developer's perspective, the complexity of the viewport and interaction heavily influences design costs.

In the event that you are offering a responsive design, for instance, you would base the design draft on two or three screens. If there are two, make a design draft that is compatible with both the website and mobile screen resolutions. You make a design that fits the size of your tablet if you are making three. Naturally, the price changes if you make two, three, or more drafts; it also varies if you make four or more.

adjustments Increasing the number of design draughts results in products that are not awkward across all screens; however, this also raises development costs. For instance, the source code for a product built on two screen sizes (viewports) will not work well with five designs. Additionally, when a correction is made, the associated code is also corrected in proportion to the number of drafts. The design period, front development period, front development difficulty, and maintenance costs all rise as a result of the increased drafts.

In general, interaction is not taken into account when outsourcing development. In terms of interaction, this indicates that the screen's elements move dynamically to produce a stunning effect. While general outsourcing does not reach the interaction level, if you want an industry-recognized top-ranked outsourced developer or a product that has won a design award, then the development process moves forward at a level that incorporates interaction. My research indicates that the price of developing a website to introduce a business or shopping center is at least 50 million won. The length of the waiting period varies based on the business, but in some instances, it is as long as a year or two months.

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4. Start-up products

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Creating a start-up-level product is often a separate story from creating a universal website. Design and development are important for start-up products, but the cost of planning is passed on to the developer. There is a lot of room for conflict with developers because most CEOs who inquire about start-up products have a low understanding of development, so they have to plan with some complexity, and they do not know how much each function affects the overall logic.

YouTube: YouTube:A good example is the following function on Instagram or YouTube:. For those unfamiliar with the development, I think it's very simple to develop the following function:. However, because the following function changes dramatically with the number of customers, how you design it for the first time will directly affect the cost of operating the service and the speed of the service in the future.

countingWith fewer than 10,000 users on the service, complex logic-free databases and backend configurations can create behavior that is not bad. However, if the number of users increases to 100,000 or 1 million, the same database configuration cannot handle it. Similar developments include counting, checking and following post-priority exposure algorithms.

In other words, most developers have a number of protections when developing startup products because even a seemingly simple feature is directly related to the development period, difficulty, and business model, and it is not easy for planning and development teams to communicate constantly. For example, you can call the price very high, check that the customer has sufficient development knowledge and communication, or specify and protect potential problems at the contract level.

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5. Blockchain Products

I will explain the price composition of blockchain products with the feeling of taking a break. Usually, when it comes to blockchain products, the most common products are token development and distribution (coin X), NFT, and direct development. Many people usually think of making coins, but coins and tokens are different concepts.

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Most people who say they will sell coins by issuing new ones cannot make coins, but they will make and sell tokens. It is very easy to make tokens, but usually those who want to sell tokens to make a service want various devices within tokens (lock-up standards, etc.), content for investor protection, and a series of procedures and homepages required for issuance, so the price often goes to hundreds of millions of dollars. In particular, when it comes to issuing tokens, many poor companies disappear for money or commit fraud, so it is necessary to proceed with a proven company.

NFTs are withering now, but until last year, there was a great demand in the development market. The price range often starts at a few million won at the very least and goes up to 100 million won. However, among NFTs, the amount of minting is very large, and if the level of development is raised to a level that prevents attacks using various security vulnerabilities, many companies demand more than 100 million development costs.

dataIn the case of direct development, it is usually not cheap. Due to the nature of the blockchain, when a problem arises, the part that the development company is responsible for becomes seriously large. The reason is that the data posted on the blockchain cannot be modified, so it requires multiple stages of test and verification. For example, if it is directly posted on the Ethereum ecosystem, the test will be conducted using the GoEly network at the development level, but if it is uploaded to the main net to test whether it is the same in real life, the cost of uploading it will be used for the test operation, and for each transaction generated during the test, it will be used at least a few thousand to tens of thousands of won, and a large number of hundreds of thousands of won.

In addition, when the scope of development increases, the direct is subjected to a kind of sharding treatment. Complexity increases not as a single large direct but as a parent-child relationship, a direct with an equal relationship, or an interactive direct. The reason is that there is a limit to the size of a direct that can be climbed on a blockchain node. Since the source code cannot be infinitely large, it must be handled at an appropriate level, and if it is not managed as a single direct, it must be separated into two or more directs.

However, these developments pose a security risk. Code for transferring authority between directs can eventually become a vulnerability, and additional tests are carried out to detect this vulnerability, test in case an attack enters, and test when the processed data grows in size.

Finally, direct development is usually requested by companies with their token ecosystem, but when the plans of planners with little understanding of blockchain development begin to be reflected, the cost and difficulty of development may skyrocket. Therefore, when you are in charge of direct development, at least one skilled blockchain developer must communicate with the planning team to solve the project's completeness and potential cost problems.

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6. Performance and Scalability

If you're a wise boss, it's a good idea to ask for an estimate by clearly dividing the stage and purpose of the product. For example, you need a plan like, "This product will be used for the next year or so, and after that, we'll expand it greatly depending on the progress of the business." If there are no clear performance improvement and scalability standards, such as "Let's make it first, and if it works out, let's stick it together," The cost increases significantly because it must be designed and developed with expansion in mind from the beginning of production.

In my experience, most products are developed, designed, and made in consideration of expansion, but in the process of development, bosses often want to add or change multiple functions. Adding and changing functions creates potential bugs and significantly reduces completeness. In particular, considering scalability means developing with the recyclability of each component in mind. That's why everything related to recycling will be affected when functions are added or changed.

To this end, if you want a product that is expandable, it is a much better choice to proceed with the development in the form of a minimum functional product (MVP), called the principle of the startup product, and upgrade to the next one after the development is completed. Most products do not produce products that are satisfactory with the first drink, and if you are outsourcing the product for the first time, there are many things you miss in the planning, so even if the developer provides a high-quality product, most of them want additional development due to the disappointment of the planning stage.

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7. technology

difference,Each developer offers a wide variety of technologies. And the minimum amount standard varies greatly depending on the technology. The recommended method does not make much difference, no matter what technology stack a static website or a universal application is developed with. For example, it doesn't matter what you do if you make a website PHP, react, or WordPress, or if the cost is almost the same. However, if a product requires a functional upgrade, we recommend using relatively up-to-date technology. This is because when you have to do business with the service in the future, it is difficult to find a developer with source code developed with too-old technology.

In the case of mobile applications, the technology used is fixed, and if there is a difference, you can see whether it is Java or Kotlin, hybrid or native in the library or language used. If you create an Android app, you'll like the code written in Kotlin, and if it's a hybrid, you'll like the reactnative, which can be maintained by a relatively large number of developers. Likewise, rather than using object c with iOS, there is an advantage if it can be written in Swift, the latest language.

8. Maintenance

Maintenance is as important as production. Most IT products may experience unexpected bugs in the future, especially if you create a completely new product. To do this, the maintenance part is specified in the contract. This part varies from developer to developer in terms and scope, and if you discuss additional maintenance periods with the developer, you can usually arrange how many people you will be in charge of per month and how much scope you will cover.

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9. Operating costs

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It's a very important part, but the last one is that all of the above has to be completed to accurately calculate operating costs. However, most operating costs are divided into static and dynamic costs, of which dynamic costs far exceed static costs, making it difficult to accurately measure.

The cost corresponding to the static cost is as follows:.

Minimum server hosting costs (minimum to hundreds of thousands of won per month)

minimum database cost

Domain purchase and annual cost

3rd Party API Monthly Cost of Use

Dynamic costs are as follows:.

cost of increasing server instances with usage

Database usage and cost of scaling up and scaling out

CDN cost (cost of caching and transferring photos, videos, etc. uploaded by users and administrators)

Other cloud service costs

These items usually occur, and most services cost at least tens of thousands of won to a few million won a month for large services.

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10. Service Steps

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Finally, there is a difference in the service stage that is built and tested. For example, large platforms like Naver know that there are more than five stages before the source code that developers have changed comes up on the main server. The stage here is the testing stage, which includes the testing level between the development and the main server.

Most small websites are developed in one step. Development is carried out in the local environment or on the development server, and when the development is completed, only the formal server remains and the development server does not operate. In other words, only one server will incur operating costs. On the other hand, as complexity increases, we divide it into one always-on-development server and one operating server for development. Then, of course, operating costs will be higher.

If there are more functions to be tested, development and testing servers will be added separately. This is for service maintenance and response to bugs. So, depending on the intermediate testing server or stage, the testing levels are divided into dev, alpha, beta, gamma, staging, and production, and the developers and testing teams will develop and operate by raising that level one by one. As a result, large projects will have more intermediate stages and higher maintenance costs.

So far, we have explained the criteria by which the developer determines the price, duration, and level. Unlike interior outsourcing or sign outsourcing, IT outsourcing projects cannot be seen with the naked eye, and we do not know how they are made internally, so you should not only launch the project but also consider various risks and maintenance. It seems necessary to design a solid business model, and if possible, I hope you work with an IT expert to create good products with good developers.

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