DOU - Pricing based on market algorithms

I will say right away that by cooperating with us, You will not have to pay for unproductive programmers’ hours, You will not need to hire and interview a team, organize it physically, legally, and technically, check its local results, or describe tasks. You pay only the cost of the development stage of Your project; we take care of everything else under the contract. Therefore, this article is not required reading. But for a general understanding of how our pricing works, we suggest that you read it.

Briefly and to the point: the price level ultimately depends on the market cost of hiring.

To answer the most important question - "how much does it cost to develop my application?" - you need to determine the number of specialists on the team and multiply the cost of their month of work by the time required to implement Your project. The time required for development is determined by our analyst and system architect jointly, based on many factors and agreeing options with the client. The team is selected by the project manager; it is mainly several developers, in rare cases - more than five people. Often the team must have a team lead (a programmer with 10+ years of experience and experience managing a team) or a senior developer (a programmer with 6+ years of experience).

https://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/?period=2022-06&posit...

This site constantly tracks changes in prices for various IT specialists. This is done by means of statistical methods for estimating the average salary based on a sample of resume questionnaires. Spoiler: the cost of developers is constantly increasing.

What kinds of developers are there

Let’s be optimistic. Suppose we have a very small project and the cheapest programmer with minimal experience will be enough for us.

Such a programmer is called an Intern. This is not yet a programmer, but rather a student who is looking for a place to get practical experience, preferably commercial.

Often, in any tasks that are even somewhat non-trivial, such a specialist will need to search for help on the internet for hours, if not days - without outside assistance. On the other hand, the cost of hiring such an employee is only a few hundred dollars per month of work. The problem is that during an interview with such a specialist it will be difficult to understand whether they are completely new, or at least already know important basics, which also often take years to master.

A Junior developer is a completely different matter. This specialist, although twice as expensive, should already definitely know all the basics of their technologies and also have experience in real projects. Yes, a Junior Developer, if they correspond to their level, should be able to program specific and precisely described functionality. Of course, they will also need time for searching, but a little less than an intern. A Junior Developer has already participated in small commercial projects, but mainly performed simple tasks such as fixing bugs or connecting simple modules or libraries. In general, junior developers are useful in a team where there is regular management and a good technical vision of the project from the team lead or architect.

A Middle specialist is the minimally necessary specialist on a team. They may not know some subtleties of application architecture, may not understand aspects of the opposite stack (for example, being specialized only in frontend or, conversely, only in backend). This specialist will not take responsibility for the entire system, but a Middle Engineer can work independently, check and correct their mistakes on time, propose local technical solutions, optimize the system, analyze security, and work according to the workflow.

Responsibility for the system, server, data, services, and applications as a whole. Sometimes a team leader is necessary on a project. This is a Senior developer who also manages the team, checks its code, and helps it technically. A Senior programmer can solve any task independently if it can be solved. And it will be done an order of magnitude better and faster than by a developer of another other class.

Project management. If You are not ready to roll up Your sleeves every day, gather people for the morning stand-up, analyze the technical specification, maintain the task tracker, write and check test cases for all theses of the technical specification, create WBS diagrams, control deadlines, communicate with specialists, and write reports and certificates of completed work - then it is better to allow a certified project manager to do this, who will keep the project in order. On some projects, the manager works half-time, while on others, on the contrary, full-time work is required. In exceptional situations, the manager works at the first stages of the project, after which the team works independently (in such cases, a business analyst must be present on the team).

Of course, there are also layout designers, designers, and other specialists who will probably be needed for Your project. We will not list everyone, but on the site You will be able to find them if You want to make a calculation. We, however, will calculate everything ourselves and name one clear and understandable figure without hidden pitfalls and upsells during the development process.

We take the cost of a month of work for all specialists (taking into account full-time or part-time work) and add 30%. Thus, we learn the cost of a month of development for the team. On average, a small team costs from 5 000 dollars per month. A more focused team for more complex projects will cost from 15 000 dollars.

In the very first month, this team will create a working version of Your application, packed with functionality in accordance with the capacity of this team.