How long will this take?

[Sharkie21]

My boss asked me to assess how long a project will take and I need some input.

The project will require me to create a user form with around 8 pages for input. Each page will focus on a specific category. Each category will have about 10 questions (option boxes, check boxes, drop down list, etc), maybe 30 controls?

I will then need to take all the input from each category and store it somewhere for future use. Also I will need to do some sort of scoring and compare it to other companies / benchmarks that are already in our database (excel sheet with all other clients info maybe).

After that I will then need to display results, mostly graphically through a variety of charts.

My VB skills are alright I think, don't really know too much about importing other modules / classes etc. I have written in VB before.

I think I can gather the input without much problem, except setting up all the forms and controls which I think will take some time. However, I think the charting will give me problems. Is it easy to add dynamic charts onto a user form, etc.

Ultimately, they want the user to fill out the forms and then hit "calculate" and a bunch of charts will appear on the user form.

Thanks.

 

[JazzSP8]

Sounds as though it's gonna take you as long as you need to make it work...

It's not really a question that can be answered, it all depends on what you know already and I assume how quick you can learn... Nobody can answer that but you...

My only advice to you would be to double, if not triple what time YOU think you need if your not sure about something and give your boss that time frame.

I quite often get requests for things that I know can be done, I just don't know how, so, I give inflated estimates knowing that I can at least learn what I need (I'm a quick learner), most of the time I finish early and that gives me chance to refine things and double check everything before I submit...

Occasionally, I run into unexpected trouble and have to spend more time than I would like doing something I assumed was simple...

I almost ALWAYS get asked to change something no matter how close my vision of the boss's vision was...

A good trick is, keep the answer the same, if you already know something, give the same time frame, that way you can get more time to spend answering the things you don't, you may even get the chance to hand something in early and really suprise them... Thats always worth something...

 

[sweater_vests_rock]

hi sharkie.

sounds pretty involved. hopefully, j walkenbach's chart-in-a-userform workaround will speed the process for you!

http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/tip66.htm

cheers.
ben.

 

[HalfAce]

I agree with pretty much everything JazzSP8 says.
The only exception (in my case) would be the statement:
I almost ALWAYS get asked to change something no matter how close my vision of the
boss's vision was...
That could be changed to "I always, ALWAYS get asked to change something. . ."

In any case it's sound advice and the charts that Ben refers to are what I use in projects
like this too.

Good luck with it. It sounds like a fun project. :wink:

 

[SydneyGeek]

Could I suggest that you try Access instead?

The forms in Access are much easier to work with than Excel UserForms. As long as you have some familiarity with Access (setting up the talbe structure, etc) you will find that you'll probably get the kob done faster.

Denis