Time and Materials Model for Software Development

High flexibility without extra expenses

Ensuring a consistent workload for every specialist involved, setting clear requirements, and establishing precise deadlines can be a challenge for some IT projects. In such cases, keeping a full-time team of software engineers and quality assurance professionals will be an unreasonable expense.

Working under the time and materials outsourcing model can help you save your budget and speed up your project’s launch by delegating part of the work to an outsourcing software engineering partner.

Just tell us:

What’s your current task at hand?
Which specialists do you need to accomplish it?
What tools and technologies do you want to use in your project?

We’ll help you get your project going right away.

When to choose the time and materials model

When working with Apriorit, you can choose among three convenient cooperation models:

Fixed price

Pay only for the strictly defined scope of work and get the results you expect by the agreed deadline.

Learn more

Time and materials

Pay for the time the development team spends working on your project and the resources used for it.

Dedicated team

Get a meticulously formed team whose attention is 100% dedicated to your project only.

Learn more

The following criteria can help you preliminarily evaluate if you should go with the time and material model in software development or consider other options:

Model and Criteria	Fixed price	Time and materials	Dedicated team
Budget	Fixed	Flexible	Predicted
Deadlines	Predefined	Flexible	Long-term defined
Scope of work	Predefined	Dynamic	Long-term defined
Project size	Small	Small / Medium	Medium / Large
Average project duration	6 months or less	6 to 12 months	1+ years

You can also take into account your project’s technology domain. Some domains that are well-suited for the time and material cooperation model include:

Kernel and driver
development

Web app development

Blockchain development

Reverse engineering

Mobile development

Quality assurance

Why choose the time and materials model?

Working under this type of cooperation model brings businesses several benefits:

BUSINESS BENEFITS OF THE TIME AND MATERIALS MODEL

Flexible workflow

Scale the team, adjust the scope of work, shift deadlines, and pause or terminate development when needed.

Quick start

Start a new project right away, outlining its goal, initial scope of work, and preliminary time estimates.

On-the-go improvements

Enhance your product iteratively after evaluating the ready parts of your software and collecting early user feedback.

Justified payments

Keep your project’s budget transparent and predictable and avoid paying for developers’ idle time.

When to consider other options

While providing tech companies and startups with great flexibility, the time and material software development scheme isn’t a perfect fit for all IT projects. Here are some reasons why you might want to consider other cooperation models:

BUSINESS CONSTRAINTS OF THE TIME AND MATERIALS MODEL

Small scope of work

Small tasks are usually easy to plan. If the project at hand is small and requires few to no changes along the way, consider choosing the fixed price model.

Well-defined plan

The more clarity you have, the less flexibility you need. Unless there’s a high chance of deviating from your plan during project implementation, consider going with the dedicated team model.

Limited budget

Project flexibility may come at the cost of budget overruns. If your budget has strict limits, consider setting a hard overall project budget or going with the fixed price model.

Our clients’ success stories

ai-based-healthcare-solution-development

Building an AI-based Healthcare Solution

Supporting and Improving Legacy Data Management Software

evaluating-smart-contract-security-for-defi

Evaluating Smart Contract Security for Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Developing a Decentralized Asset Market on the Tezos Blockchain

Discover more

What our clients say about us

We needed someone to create sample demo websites that we can use to demonstrate how login, registration, and user management would fit into the workflow of any brand or product company. […]

Apriorit was able to successfully deliver the product on time while adhering to the budget and client’s requirements. The team was highly communicative, and internal stakeholders were particularly impressed with the quality of their work and responsive approach. Read more on Clutch.co »

VP of Products,
Strivacity

We have a model that applies to vulnerabilities we wanted to find. This is a very complex approach that we developed in-house. We needed more hands to develop the complete solution. […]

They’re professional and independent. I gave them specifications, and they were able to handle most of the work completely independently. Except for our daily meetings, I didn’t have to deal with them. The results were good. All the integration processes led to increased dialogue with them as well. Read more on Clutch.co »

Head of Research,
Risk Assessment & Cybersecurity Company

We were looking for a specific niche area of software development. The majority of software development houses are data-focused rather than dealing with low-level work.
If someone is looking for low-level software development that understands the technology, they know how to stretch it to the limits and achieve what other groups say is unachievable. The team at Apriorit doesn’t take no for an answer. They will find a way to fulfill any client’s business needs. It’s something we’ve struggled to find with other companies we previously worked with in this area. Read more on Clutch.co »

Head of Project Development,
Parental Control SaaS Provider