How long will a web based project development take?

Question

I am about to embark on an epic journey of Web development. Epic for myself, that is. The biggest and most difficult one yet. The rough thing about this project is the time involved. My boss wants me to put this project on a schedule, but I just have no Idea how to do this.

So, could someone give me an advice: how should I calculate the time involved in developing a web project? I have the following means thought of:

• Per code lines. Setting a specific amount of time per code line, and then try to account for the total amount of code needed.
• Per piece of website. Trying to define pieces of the project that can be put on a concise amount of time
• Trying to guess the whole amount it would take.

Could someone give me some advice?

Answer 1

Break your features down into discrete pieces or milestones. Once you have that, each piece will be easier to estimate. Don't forget to take into account integration and system testing. And keep in mind that you'll need to factor in time to debug and fix bugs.

Forget about lines of code. In any case, you won't know how many lines of code you'll need until you are done, among other reasons why this metric won't tell you anything useful.