[rabidrat]

Okay, so let's be optimistic and say a team of 4 can do in 12 weeks what that one dev could do in 4 weeks. 48 dev-weeks vs 4 dev-weeks. Do you think it's reasonable for a project to cost 10x as much just for that precious consistency? Not to mention that longer projects with larger teams have higher variability in outcome, with most projects overshooting by 100% or more. Is this really the right attitude then?

[luckylion]

> Do you think it's reasonable for a project to cost 10x as much just for that precious consistency?

Somewhat, yes. You want to be able to plan. Inefficiency is often the price for being able to plan. Since it's often not only about this one project, a higher price is just fine - you may have to coordinate with marketing, legal, sales, manufacturing etc, then the total price will often be so large that the 10x of the software project doesn't really matter, but if it falls flat and gets everything delayed, the damage may be huge (think global launch date missed).

[katbyte]

No to mention if its well written and documented it's not impossible or even necessarily all that hard for another talented dev to ramp up and take over...