THE PROJECT ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES’ APPROACHES

Abstract

Summary Today, the quantity of digitized products development is growing rapidly. The number of the tech startups is increasing every day not only worldwide, but in Ukraine too. The Lviv region has been showing positive growth dynamics for several years in a row by the number of newly opened companies, which in turn indicates an increase in projects’ volume growth. The IT-industry is a market whose competitiveness is increasing yearly, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with it. Despite the diversify experience, large companies in the Lviv market (Softserve, Global logic, Epam) can give in to their performance indicators, to the small emerging agencies. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the activities of software companies to understand better what indicators should be used to improve projects’ estimation and, to stay on the market at the expense of good reputation. Foreign experts believe that a reliable projects’ estimation is the key to its successful implementation and completion for all stakeholders. Domestic enterprises are not fully acquainted with the cost estimation techniques or do not pay sufficient attention to them. Therefore, there is a need for detailed research and information on the peculiarities of that approaches in the informational technology industry. The relevance of the topic is to study the main approaches to the cost estimation techniques of IT projects in the domestic market. The article explores the main project cost estimation techniques at IT-industry. The comparative characteristic of top-down and bottom-up estimation methods is analyzed, to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of their implementation in small business activity. The project database of the top branding agency named Qubstudio is analyzed for the applied comparison of the techniques mentioned above. Special attention is paid to the main factors such as scope, time, costs, quality, human resources and risks to accurately estimate the project's cost. The given examples show, that the successful estimation should take into account the informational needs of all project` stakeholders, who can control its cost anyway and anytime.