how to build a tesla car for the price of a chevrolet
TRANSCRIPT
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
