Time & Material
This is the way you want to be charged for software house’s services.
Time & Material means that you will pay only for hours of work needed to deliver a working piece of software. An invoice comes (at least at eVolpe Software House) once per Sprint. Thanks to that, you stay in control of the budget and are free to stop, prolong or extend your project.
Time & Material is especially useful for ongoing ventures. It is easier to work that way, especially when you are not sure how long it will take to build a complete system. It might sound a little shocking at the beginning, but there are no rigid deadlines for the team and there is no fixed price.
Why should you avoid fixed price contracts?
A fixed price in software development means stagnation and little room for improvement. It usually requires a set-in stone Software Requirement Specification (SRS) – a documentation that is hard to produce and difficult to follow.
If you insist on fixing the budget, you need to be ready to wait for results. There’s a lot of work before the development starts. It takes time to create a thorough description of something that’s only a concept in our heads. And we need to go through a lot of possibilities.
The biggest disadvantage is that the requirements you finally put together will most likely expire before we finish the project. Wouldn’t you rather be able to adjust to the forever changing business environment?
Be agile, work in Scrum, pay for Time & Material
Time & Material is a characteristic of agile software development and the Scrum framework. That is what working in Sprints is all about.
The biggest advantage of Time & Material is that you keep control over your project. You are free to change direction as you wish or need at any given moment.
If you want, we can rework some parts of the project or add new elements. All we need is a new User Story in the Product Backlog, no need to rewrite a documentation or to amend our contract. We will adjust the schedule and the priorities as Product Owner tells us to. Further, less significant features can be discussed in later meeting sessions. No need to worry about the whole picture before there is even an MVP.
What to pay attention to when opting for Time & Material?
Controlling the budget with Time & Material is much easier than you might think.
Each task comes with an approximate man-hour cost. You will be able to estimate your spendings in advance. In the first stages of our cooperation we will give you information about a budget cap. It will be much easier to calculate how much you’ll pay for the system in the currently agreed shape.
Just pay attention to:
To do that, appoint a Product Owner – a highly decisive person that will keep track of the priorities, quality of work and the budget. They will need to be present for all the key meetings during each Sprint and provide the programmers with constructive feedback.
It will definitely pay off at the end. You’ll see the benefits when you start working with a correctly tailored, user-focused software.
Let’s talk!
