Do you think that we in IT sit and take prices for purchases out of thin air? Of course not. Each figure in the estimate is not a fantasy, but a reflection of real costs and risks.

First, let’s see why the prices of IT services are increasing in general?

1. Shortage of personnel. Competent developers are worth their weight in gold, and the more complex the project, the higher the rate. One of the reasons is the massive outflow of specialists to Western companies. In order to retain employees, companies increase their salaries, and this directly affects the cost of services.

2. Increasing requests for security. For example, in government projects, security requirements are growing like yeast. Any additional level of protection is months of work, testing and verification.

3. Complexity of integration. Most often, orders involve the integration of the system under development with existing solutions. And this is a separate pain for IT companies. The more interactions, the higher the probability of problems, and therefore more time and money spent on testing and support.

4. Short deadlines and unique requirements. IT development orders often come with tight deadlines and unique requirements. This leads to higher prices: teams have to work in an accelerated mode, which increases costs.

IT project pricing is not just the cost of programmers’ hours. At the stage of value formation, many more factors are involved than it might seem at first glance. Customers are often surprised: why the same task is different in different companies? Let’s put everything on the shelves so that it is clear what the price consists of and why we cannot do projects for pennies.

A very common situation (I think many IT companies will agree with me) is that the customer comes with one idea, and at the exit it turns out to be completely different. As a result, we spend time on multiple discussions, refinements and edits. In large and highly loaded systems, the issue of stability and security is a separate story. Architecture, integrations, tests – all this costs money, and not because developers want to earn more, but because every mistake here is a disaster. It is better to invest in quality architecture at the start than to save a project that is constantly breaking.

Don’t forget about the risks. They are everywhere. And the more unknowns, the more risks are embedded in the price. It may seem to you that we are including some “air” in the calculation, but in fact this is not so. We simply plan expenses for unforeseen situations in advance, which will certainly happen in 99% of cases. Without this “safety cushion”, no project will be profitable.

Software and licenses.

Every project requires software. And these are not free programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. If we are talking about state systems, we need certified solutions that have been checked for safety and compliance with GOST. And such decisions cost money. While import substitution is in full swing, this does not mean that software prices have fallen. Most often, Russian analogues cost the same as Western solutions, or even more. Because certification is a headache for developers, and they build that cost into the cost.

Iron.

IT projects often require the purchase of servers, storage equipment, network devices, etc. All this is not bought at the nearest electronics store. You need to meet security requirements, be ready for heavy loads and keep data under lock and key. Servers that meet these requirements, as before, are purchased abroad, and their price directly depends on the dollar exchange rate. So with every jump in the exchange rate, our estimates also increase.

Documentation and bureaucracy.

A large IT project is a huge pile of documentation. It is not just to develop software, but also to write instructions, technical documentation, an implementation plan, a security report, and a thousand other pieces of paper required by the regulations. And every additional document is our time and your money. When the TOR changes in the middle of a project (which happens often), we don’t just rewrite the code, we update the entire documentation. This is an additional hour, which again goes into the estimate.

Every penny we include in the estimate is a reasonable expense. We are trying to make a project in real conditions, where every step is the work of specialists, licenses, security and bureaucracy.