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— Build cost · upkeep · free

A feature cost calculator, for the build and the years after.

Featurevote has a free feature cost calculator. Enter how long a feature takes to build, how many people work on it and what an hour costs, and it shows what the feature costs to build and to keep.

Every feature you ship also needs fixes, support and updates for as long as you keep it, so the calculator adds a share of the build cost for each year.

For each person, from design to release.

With different hours each, use the average.

In your currency, with taxes and benefits.

Of the build cost, for fixes and support.

How long you expect to keep the feature.

To build
12,000
Upkeep each year
2,400
First year, build and upkeep
14,400
Over 3 years
19,200

Upkeep starts the year the feature ships, so the first year includes one year of it.

— Five inputs

How to estimate the cost of a feature.

The build cost is hours times people times the cost of an hour. Upkeep is a percentage of that, once a year.

Hours to build.
Count design, code, review, testing and the release, not only the coding. First guesses tend to be low, so many teams add a third or a half on top.
People working on it.
Everyone who spends time on the feature. Hours to build is per person, so if a designer spends 20 hours and two developers 80 hours each, enter 3 people and 60 hours.
Cost per hour, per person.
Salary plus taxes, benefits and tools, divided by the hours worked in a year. A rough rule is the yearly salary times 1.3, divided by 1,800. For contractors, use their rate.
Upkeep each year.
Bug fixes, support questions and changes when other parts of the product move. Teams often plan for 15 to 20 percent of the build cost a year.
Years to count.
How long you expect to keep the feature. Few features are ever removed, so three to five years is a fair horizon.

— Before you build it

Compare the cost with how many people asked for it.

A voting board shows which requests enough people want to be worth that cost. On a Featurevote board, customers post feature requests and vote on them, and each request shows its vote count next to the others.

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