In this section, a project budget that includes all the costs incurred during the realization of this project will be estimated.
This project budget will include the direct costs (those directly related with the development of the program), the indirect costs (those that allow the development) and possible unforeseen costs and contingencies.
9.1. Temporal estimation
Before any cost estimates can be calculated, it is necessary to first establish the number of man-hours invested in this project. The concept of man-hours refers to an hour regarded in terms of the amount of work that can be done by one person within this period.
This will be done as an estimation since the specific number of hours worked was not recorded, so an approximation as faithful as possible to reality will be used.
Table 2 shows the breakdown of each task and how many man-hours were invested into each, along with the total number of hours in the bottom of the table. Table 3 also shows the time invested into each subtask.
As the TFG represents 12 ECTS credits in the degree’s curriculum, equivalent to around three hundred hours of study, it is easy to see that the time invested in the project corresponds very closely with that value.
Task Estimated time (in man-hours)
Acquisition of required knowledge 35
Initial program implementation 50
Mid-term meeting with project supervisor 1
Second program implementation 100
User interface development 45
Connecting the program and the interface 25
Final tasks 15
Thesis writing 30
Total 301
Table 2. Estimation of time required for each task.
Task Estimated time (in man-hours)
Acquisition of required knowledge 35
First approach 5
Information search 15
Small prototype implementation 15
Initial program implementation 50
Program design 10
Implementation 35
Associated documentation 5
Mid-term meeting with project supervisor 1
Second program implementation 100
Information search 10
Program redesign 10
Implementation 70
Associated documentation 10
User interface development 45
Design 15
Implementation 25
Associated documentation 5
Connecting the program and the interface 25
Implementation 10
Table 3. Estimation of time required for each task and subtask.
9.2. Direct costs
There are three different kinds of resources that need to be taken into account in the direct costs of the project:
- Hardware - Software
- Human resources
Before starting with the estimations, and to understand how they have been calculated in this project, it is a good idea to introduce the concept of amortization and the formula used in this thesis. Calculating the amortization is necessary because the value of property, plant and equipment in a real company would not be entirely dedicated to this particular project. This means it is important to determine which fraction of the costs of the resources were really incurred in the realization of this project.
The formula used to calculate the amortization of the resources used in this project is the following:
Table 4 shows an estimation of the cost of the hardware used in this project, with amortization costs factored in.
Product Price (EUR) Useful life Amortization (EUR)
PC (including peripherals) 1200 6 years 27.49
Total 1200 27.49
And Table 5 shows the costs associated with the software used during the realization of this project. As most pieces of software used in this project are open source, the only software costs to consider come from the operating system.
Table 4. Estimated hardware costs.
Product Price (EUR) Useful life Amortization (EUR)
Windows 10 140 5 years 3.85
Open-source software 0 - 0
Total 140 3.85
As can be seen in Table 4 and Table 5, the project costs associated with hardware and software are almost negligible and the vast majority of the cost of the project comes from the cost of human resources.
Table 6 shows the estimated human resource costs assuming the entire project was done by a single engineer. This has been the case for this particular project, as with most TFEs, but in a real company the work would be divided between multiple workers, each specialized in their own field.
Job Cost / hour (EUR)
Hours /
week Total weeks Total project salary (EUR)
Software engineer 23.67 40 8 7124.67
Total 7124.67
Salary information for the cost/hour estimates in Table 6 were obtained by calculating the arithmetic mean of the software engineers’ salaries retrieved from three different websites Glassdoor [14], Payscale [15], and Money.usnews.com [16] that estimate, from a great deal of data, the market salaries of different job positions.
Finally, Table 7 summarizes all the direct costs in one table.
Concept Cost (EUR)
9.3. Indirect costs
Indirect costs are those related to the project, but not attributable to the development of the final program. A real company could include many costs in this category (electricity, water, office material or food for the employees among others) but in the case of this project, only two indirect costs are considered as the rest are not especially relevant with only one person doing the entire project.
Table 8 summarizes the indirect costs considered for this project: electricity and internet connection. The cost has been estimated using the approximate electrical consumption of a PC if it stays on for eight hours each day and that the internet connection is paid each month.
The prices of each item were obtained by doing an arithmetic mean of the prices found in the following sources: Alonso [17], Comparaiso.es [18], and tarifasgasluz.com [19].
Product Price (EUR) Units Estimated cost (EUR)
Electricity 0.09 € / kWh 800 kWh 72
Internet connection 40 € / month 5 months 200
Total 272
9.4. Unforeseen costs and contingencies
The project has been developed without any unforeseen costs arising, but any project must have some contingencies in the budget in case some unpredicted factor requires more budget than expected.
For this reason, if this project was pitched to an investor, the contingency clause would represent an extra fifteen percent (15%) increase in the budget, to account for unexpected events and to give more leeway to the project engineers before they require a budget increase.
Table 8. Total indirect costs.
9.5. Total costs
Table 9 summarizes the total costs for the project, obtained by merging all the information acquired and shown in the previous sections.
Concept Estimated Cost (EUR)
Direct costs 7156.01
Indirect costs 272
Subtotal 7428.01
Contingencies (15%)
1114.20
Total 8542.21
Table 9. Estimated total cost of the project.