Report Estimation for a project being built from scratch

[cogcurious]

A project is about to start and everything would be built from scratch including database, ETL.
How do you estimate reports for such a scneario when there is nothing to base on? Normally one of the things i used to look at was number of tables accessed, facts, dimensions, etc

[hthakkar]

After Analyzing the data base and the number of tables accessed, facts, dimensions, etc,i would approach towards the nature of Analysis they want to make ,that would decide up the complexity of the project and hence the timeline.The level of analysis,number of reports,so if they need normal analysis the model would be relational and if they require multidimensional analysis we would plan up for Cubes.

So mainly it all depends on how and what data users wants to see.So once we get at least a high level of this,we can plan out our estimation that once the DB is complete :

                   1.We would estimate few days for analysis of data along with documentations
                   2.Then estimate days for Framework Modelling(That would purely depend on               the  requirement and the DB structure)
                   3.Number of reports and their complexity would decide the days for developing them.
                   4.Unit test, Documentation ,deployment will add up to the estimates.


Thanks,
Hitesh
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hthakkar@infocepts|www.infocepts.com
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[cogcurious]

Thanks. You mentioned you would start and hence in some way base on the database structure. But,  in my case, we don't have any idea about the number of facts or dimenions.  These would be decided later when we get into data modelling. In such a scenario, how can we estimate?

[hthakkar]

Alteast from the clients requirement we can analyze a virtual structure which would be developed ,not exact but we can atleast analyze what all facts and dimensions would be requires.

Thanks,
Hitesh
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hthakkar@infocepts|www.infocepts.com
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