Timeline & Budget Analysis
Timeline
The project was originally planned for a six-month development period but ran to roughly eight months — about four weeks past the revised estimate. Two factors drove most of the overrun:
- Stakeholder availability. Securing interviews with DeSIC staff during the academic calendar was harder than anticipated, which delayed finalizing requirements.
- RBAC complexity. Implementing multi-role access control consistently across both frontend and backend took longer than the initial estimate accounted for.
Deployment also extended slightly due to cold-start latency on Render's free tier (see Infrastructure), which required additional configuration and testing before the team was confident in the live environment.
Despite the overrun, every project objective was met and the system was delivered in full working order.
Budget
The project came in at KES 3,800 — marginally below the lower bound of the KES 4,000–5,000 estimate. Two decisions shaped the final number:
- Skipping a custom domain name saved roughly KES 1,200.
- Documentation costs ran higher than estimated, due to binding and printing requirements for the academic submission, but this was largely offset by the domain savings.
Internet costs were also slightly elevated, reflecting the extended development timeline. Overall, the budget outcome reflects the deliberate choice of open-source tools and free-tier infrastructure described in Methodology.
Related pages
- Objectives Evaluation for how delivery quality held up despite the schedule slip.
- Roadmap for infrastructure changes that would address the cold-start issue going forward.