

Ask HN: Advice on pricing an idea to present to my company - samstave

I work for a software and services company. I have the ear of the exec team/founders/board (We have google execs on our board) about some ideas for the direction of our software/platform.<p>I have already spec'd some functionality out - but I would like to pursue getting a more specific spec/functionality defined as well as getting it quoted from an external dev.<p>What is the best way to do this?<p>I have previously gotten a quote from a dev - but I <i>really</i> didnt trust their numbers given the way they quoted it (e.g. "Setup development environment, 40 hours -- Define Interfaces, 40 hours" etc..)<p>Has anyone tried to price out even with a ROM something they want to propose?<p>What are the pitfalls, best practice?
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arkitaip
The problem is that you're asking them to decide up-front how long it will
take, make risk assessments, getting the spec right before they have even
started looking at the problem, etc. It's extremely difficult to develop code
like this; it's waterfall all over again. Needless to say, they are going to
give you numbers that aren't grounded in reality.

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samstave
Please educate me:

How is your comment true for ANY outside developer asked to quote the
development of any product. Especially a mobile app.

We have _thousands_ of IOS developers these days, are you saying NONE of them
can give an accurate quote for software?

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arkitaip
Sure they can give you a quote, it just won't be a very accurate one. There
are entire schools of software development - lean, agile, etc - based on the
idea that you simply cannot hand someone a spec upfront and expect them to
provide you with all the time and costs figured out.

