Time & Material is a financial interaction model that involves the absence of a fixed sum for the entire project in advance. The final cost is calculated after the work is completed and consists of the cost of the specialists' work hours and their progress made during that time.
This concept is based on two principles:
- Payment is made for the actual time worked.
- Maximum transparency of the result for the client. At their discretion, they can receive intermediate results, make changes to the requirements, and adjust them at any stage.
The Time & Material principle has found application in many areas, including the IT industry. This is due to the fact that the requirements for IT products can undergo significant changes during the development process. Development takes a certain amount of time and can take several months depending on the complexity of the future product. It is not uncommon for changes to be made to legislation during this time, which is the cause of changes to the future functionality or evaluation criteria.
Features of Time & Materials:
- Transparency for the client: The client can see the entire process of working on the project. This way, the client understands how much time was spent on the work, what they are paying for, and what the final cost consists of.
- Flexibility and the ability to change requirements for the final result: Budgets can be formed during the work process.
- Ability to request intermediate results at any stage, and the ability to adjust the necessary stage of the work process. This is important because expectations of the result will be based on real experience, and the client will clearly understand why they received this particular result.
- A variable approach to execution: Since T&M allows for changes, the client and contractor can adjust the project's scope and timeline as needed.
Who is Time & Material suitable for?
When there is no clear understanding of what the final result should be and it is difficult to formulate a clear specification at once, it can be changed at different stages of the project implementation.
- For programs that are in the testing, bug fixing, maintenance, and error correction stage. T&M is an optimal option for working with individual parts or functions of the project.
- For a large project that will be implemented from scratch when it is difficult to determine the duration of full implementation or to name the future size of necessary work.
- In projects where the client wishes to have maximum involvement in the project and the ability to change requirements during the work process.
- For unique IT products for an external audience, the creation of which involves taking into account the opinions of future users. In this case, each subsequent step is taken based on new data.
We develop solutions of various complexities and also offer clients to cooperate with us through Time & Material. Such a format of interaction helps the client to minimize risks and adapt their future product to new requirements during the development process.
