Presale expertise

Estimation

While working on estimating the project, I solve the following tasks:

• Customers validation to understand their willingness to accept an estimate and work together on a project.
• An estimate creation in terms of time for the work amount that should be performed at the design stage.
• Considering the side of development and selected technical solutions.
• Giving a primary fragmentation of design stages: as a designer, I have to understand the steps needed on a particular project.
• Development of a design strategy: a general strategy for developing a design for a specific project - in fact, it's formed already at the fragmentation of design stages.
• Considering the level of the designer who will participate in the project and choosing the best combination of team performers.

In order to determine the type of estimate, I also had to define the error based on the initial requirements of the potential customer. Based on the percentage of errors, I made an estimate of 4 types: SR (Super Rough), ROM, Precise and Fixed.

SR and ROM estimate examples:

Precise and Fixed estimate examples:

Also, along with the calculation of time for design development, a table was added: it contains the areas of responsibility of specialists involved in the project or presale.

Presale artefacts

The artifacts of the presale process are determined by the needs and requirements of the future project. At the time of evaluating work scope, we are streamlining to immerse ourselves in the project as deeply as possible and understand it well. Therefore, the results of the work can be both block diagrams of the future flow design, and full-fledged wireframes, if necessary.

The most common expertise artifacts are: block diagrams, modular diagrams, section and screen diagrams, application architecture, list of basic functionality, a limited number of screens, wireframes, and Proof of Concept screens. Some examples of artifacts can be seen below:

Summing up

Costly software projects and multifunctional products require a detailed study of offers from various suppliers. The clearer and more complicated the characteristics and principles of operation are, the easier it is to choose a well-designed option.

Presale expertise is one of the ways of my personal growth as a designer. We could carry out our tasks effectively with a team of presale experts from the R&D and Sales departments. Part of the work of each presale expert is strictly regulated in order not to create output confusion and avoid excess effort. The results of each expert's contribution were necessarily collected in a typical document to see the whole picture of the upcoming project.