Notes for the person deciding whether to build something, and what to build first. Software development cost, timelines, the trade-offs nobody mentions until the invoice arrives. Nothing here is written for other developers: if a piece cannot help you decide something or ask a better question, it does not get published.
3 articles so far, in four groups: what an internal tool costs and how it is scoped, what changes when the product lives on a phone, how automated tests earn their keep, and what it takes to release and keep something alive. New ones arrive every few days — the schedule is set, so the queue does not depend on anybody remembering.
Data migration is the part of a CRM project that is quoted as a line item and turns out to be a quarter of the work. Here is what makes it expensive and what you can decide in advance to make it cheaper.
The number depends on four things, and none of them is the number of screens. Here they are, in the order they move the price.
Most companies should buy the box, and we say so before taking money. Here is the specific test that tells you which side of the line you are on, and what it costs to be wrong in each direction.
Reading rather than deciding? The case studies are the same arguments applied to two real products, with the prices, the timelines and a demo you can open on sample data.