How to build a Tesla car for the price of a Chevrolet

How To Build A Tesla Car For The Price Of A Chevrolet

How estimating your software needs can help you make the right business decisions.

www.xsolve.pl

Piotr MajchrzakXSolve CEO by passion | amateur Radio Operator by heart

@piotrmajchrzak

The inspiration struck when I was sitting in a new

Tesla S Model

When you draft your idea for your SaaS Product or

Enterprise Software you start with “what”.

Requirements can come in different forms, however, they

tend to be more general than specific, especially when the

timing is everything.

Nowadays, you need to be agile, change the requirements

according to the needs of users, constantly testing and

improving to achieve a perfect product market fit.

But this is business so you need to plan at least the budget

and time. You must ask your chosen Development Teams

to estimate your software.

The estimate

A big surprise!

You now have the number of days needed to develop the system.

But each company gave you a different

estimate...

■ Team A - 60 Man Days

■ Team B - 360 Man Days

■ Team C - 180 Man Days

Relax! This is normal

So what happened?

Each team had your requirements but they

didn’t have your vision of how the system

should look like. The teams didn’t have

detailed specification, so they estimated the

system, which they assumed would be good.

If your product was a car dashboard

They would envision it like

this...

TEAM A

Startup Dashboard

Ballpark estimate: 60 Man Days

TEAM B

State-of-the-art

Dashboard

Ballpark estimate: 360 Man Days

TEAM C

In-between Dashboard

Ballpark estimate: 180 Man Days

These three different dashboards meet the same requirements

But in different ways...

■ Comfortable steering wheel

■ Readable display of basic car

measurements such as speed

■ Blower / Air Vent

■ Safety environment

So how to build a Tesla-like product for a budget

of a Chevrolet?

Here it goes: You can’t.

Unless you want to be fooled, you can’t build something,

which is five times better within 20% of a budget.

But for the 20% of the budget you can build an MVP

Ask yourself specific these questions

to help you identify your needs

■ What does “better” mean for your

business?

■ Does your business, at this specific time,

really needs to be a Tesla car?

■ What do you need today?

Do you need a truck to take your two children to school or

a simple but safe car is fine for now?

Sometimes, having a lot of unnecessary features won’t get

you closer to your business goals

One more thing

about estimations

■ Don’t make just one estimation

■ Iterate your idea, talk to your dev teams,

and tune the development needs to

your budget

■ A small difference in requirements can

make a big difference in time and price

Thank You!

Photo credits: www.tesla.com

www.xsolve.pl hello@xsolve.pl