We often get questions about the cost of writing software within 10 minutes of consultation when customers call Maytech software company to find a software outsourcing partner.

It is difficult to answer this question, because it is similar to the following scenario.

You call a car dealer and describe the car “I need a 4-wheel car, with a steering wheel to change direction, a brake to stop, an accelerator to increase speed, 5 seats and air conditioning. How much does it cost?”, I guarantee that the consultant will be stunned because he does not know what to say. If you meet a smart guy, he will say “Yes, only 350 million.”

When you receive the car, it is a Kia Morning. You are surprised because in your mind is a Mercedes S600. You ask the car salesman, why is it so short, why is it so small, why is it so ugly, there will be 1000 reasons why. Because you only have 10 minutes to describe the car, and only describe the functions, not the detailed operating parameters. Obviously, the Kia Morning has all the functions you require.

But it is not the car you need, so you drive it a few times and let it collect dust.

So to have a figure for the cost of writing software that is close to your needs. You have to be the one to prepare the software requirements carefully. Or you have some software to refer to, it is even better, like I want to buy a car like the BMW 750.

1. The basic parameters required when requesting software writing include:

• How many branches, how many companies use it.
• How many employees use it.
• How many concurrent users are maximum. Software with 1 million concurrent users will have a different design than software with 100 concurrent users.
• Requirement to run on computers or run on all devices.
• Are there any special data entry speed requirements? For example, if an order is required to be entered in 3 seconds, the order entry section will have to be specially designed.
• Is there a lot of data to be processed in the system: for example, software that processes 100 orders a day will be different from software that processes 100 million orders a day.
• List of objects participating in the system: users, orders, products, receipts, payment vouchers, etc.

We list here some quick methods to calculate the cost of writing software for your reference

2. Calculate by the number of data fields

A data field is an attribute that describes an object participating in the system. For example, the User object has the fields: Full name, date of birth, gender, email, phone number, password. There are 7 data fields in total.

The estimated cost per data field is $30. So the cost of making the above user management software will be: 7*$30=$210 equivalent to 5 million.

However, depending on the complexity of data processing in the system, the cost may be higher. For example, when entering data, if someone is young, send an iPhone advertising email, if someone is old, send an email advertising medicine.

3. Calculate according to the expected implementation time

This calculation is not as accurate as the above method. However, you can roughly calculate the relative cost in your head when you have a relative estimate of the project implementation time.

For example, the project is implemented in 4 months with 4 programmers and 1 project manager. 1 tester cost will be:

• Cost for LTV: 4*3,000*4=$48,000
• Project manager cost: 4000*4=$16,000
• Tester cost: 2000*4=$8,000
  Other costs such as:
• Management, sales, after-sales maintenance, training: $5,000
• Total: $77,000= 1 billion 800 million VND.

You will be surprised, why is the programmer’s salary up to 69,000,000VND/month. We list here the cost in 1 month for 1 programmer:

Programmer’s cost in software quotation

With each programmer, the company has a surplus of 14 million a month but has to pay taxes and fees, and take care of employees when there are no projects, it’s really not easy, right?

4. Calculate by average

Some software has a specific function, it does not have many objects participating in the system, the data processing is not much but it is very complicated.

For example, image recognition software, it will count the number of cars and motorbikes passing through an intersection and automatically coordinate traffic lights to match the traffic flow to ensure optimal traffic through the intersection. With this software, pricing is extremely difficult, because it requires deep expert knowledge, and the difficulty of the traffic measurement function and requires 24/24 stability and high reliability.

This way of pricing software is often like you are traveling and are in a souvenir shop. You do not know the real price of the item you want to buy and you will go to each shop and ask for the price. Just ask the 5th shop and you can get the relative price of the item you want to buy.

You do the same for software, you ask 10 companies for their prices, then take the average, you will have a relative price of the software. However, you must ask clearly if a company quotes too high or too low to eliminate companies that do not understand the requirements or are not capable of giving a rough quote.

The difficulty of this method is that you have to get the prices of at least 5 companies. Not every company will seriously sit down and analyze and give you a quote for that very difficult and specific software. And you also cannot know if that company has the capacity to implement the software you require.

This method is also a cross-reference for the 2 cost calculation methods above to help you have a more accurate figure for the software cost.

5. Calculate by detailed function

This method requires the software to have gone through the design analysis step. Calculating the construction cost will be much easier and more accurate than the 3 methods above.

Requirements:

• Analysis of the function requirements.
• Software interface design table with full description of functions, data fields and data processing methods.

This method is applied to software that is analyzed and designed by another partner, you need a construction partner. The software writing process will follow the waterfall method. This method of writing software is no longer popular because it takes a lot of time to analyze the design, and this design analysis is only on paper, so when put into operation, many problems will be exposed that need to be edited.

Instead of sitting down to analyze, both sides will set out the goals of the software and build it to meet the goals, both sides will build, edit and improve together to quickly get the software that meets the needs of the business. This is a popular software writing method, the Agile method