Yes and no. A barebones mobile app is fast to develop when you're working with experienced people who know what they want.
If you're working with first-timers, you have to account for 3 - 5 major redesign decisions along the way.
There are valid techniques for mitigating this: educating the client, setting clear expectations, delineating desired outcomes, having an iron-clad contract, charging for modifications, etc.
Each of those approaches is arguably good/bad in terms of project management on consulting work.
But at the end of the day, if you work on tech projects with first-timers, there's going to be a learning curve, and that learning curve is going to 2x or 3x your dev time, if you're smart about it. Or 10x your dev time if you're not.
Oh yeah - that's why their 70% discounted hybrid MVP solution is advertised at the end of the calculator... they're trying to sell their services by showing extreme stats imo.
I’m just trying to figure out how an estimate is supposed to cover PMO, design, dev, QA, and deployment for $70K over 6-9 months. That’s ... an unusual cost and time breakdown, to put it mildly.
If you're working with first-timers, you have to account for 3 - 5 major redesign decisions along the way.
There are valid techniques for mitigating this: educating the client, setting clear expectations, delineating desired outcomes, having an iron-clad contract, charging for modifications, etc.
Each of those approaches is arguably good/bad in terms of project management on consulting work.
But at the end of the day, if you work on tech projects with first-timers, there's going to be a learning curve, and that learning curve is going to 2x or 3x your dev time, if you're smart about it. Or 10x your dev time if you're not.