What is the Purpose of Preliminary Project Assessment
The preliminary project assessment (PPA) is the process that is aimed at evaluating the technical requirements and approximating the cost of a given project. Besides these estimations, PPA’s goal is to answer some of the key business questions that arise before the development even starts:
- How can we ensure the timely delivery of an application?
- What potential roadblocks can we encounter mid-development?
- Can the project be scaled to meet increasing consumer demands?
- What are some major steps towards delivering a high-quality product?
- How can we ensure that our product has a competitive edge?
Why PPA is Important?
First of all, the preliminary assessment allows you as a business owner to estimate the potential ROI (returns on investments) and it gives you a clear understanding of what can be done as well as at what cost.
Second, it provides transparency between a software development company and its client. Having a transparent process is crucial, for a variety of reasons, both strategic and in terms of publicity. It allows IT companies to spend less time on research, gives a clear customer focus and involves the customer in the development process.
The PPA also gives a software developer company the chance to communicate requirements related to additional deliverables and leverage the experience gained from similar projects.
How is PPA Structured
In most cases the PPA can be broken down into several stages, let’s move through each step by step, shall we.
- Initial contact. It is a starting point for practically any project. You approach a IT firm with a request to assess a project.Probably, you’ll be asked to fill in an application form with very typical and straightforward questions. This is where your input ends, and a software development company takes over.
- The first thing that a company will do is decide on the technology stack for your project. Or in simpler terms, what kind of tools, operating system, and related support programs are necessary to deliver this particular project.
- Then it’s time to draw a component diagram that will logically map out all technology parts.
- After the map is completed the cost of each component can be estimated, which is usually happens during an expert meeting of senior staff.
The next step is not is not always the same, because it assumes that either there are still some blanks in developer’s understanding and additional information from the client is required or if a customer asks for a more accurate estimation.
- In both cases, the company presents its estimations to you and arranges a follow-up questions meeting, where two parties go back and forward trying to eliminate any remaining uncertainties.
- Finally, the detailed cost breakdown can be delivered.
Following Up on Project Assessment
Very rarely, the preliminary assessment stands on its own. Typically, in the industry of IT, it is followed by a detailed evaluation. The PPA gives client understanding of how the project will be delivered, while the second assessment usually elaborates on it and takes a look at entire endeavor in higher resolution, so to speak.
The nice thing about preliminary assessment is that it is doesn’t really require a great resource input and can be given within a really short timeframe.
If your company is interested in a project assessment, then you can contact us at Intechcore. We offer a completely free preliminary project assessment for your IT project.
