Blueprint
Blueprint · Alignment calculator

What would an aligned model save your project?

Enter your team, timeline and rate. The calculator estimates the rework, clarification and onboarding time a shared, compiler-checked domain model removes from the rest of your project, with every assumption shown.

Your project

Team and timeline
people
months
months
Savings apply to the work still ahead of you.
Cost
/ hr
How the team works today
hrs / person / wk
Back-and-forth between developers, BAs and product owners about what the business actually means.
people
person-days
Subject-matter experts and team members working with us on the model. Counted as a cost.
Adjust research assumptions
hrs / month
%
Boehm & Basili report 40–50% on typical projects. 30% is deliberately cautious.
%
A large part of rework can be attributed to domain misunderstanding. 50% is our working assumption, not a research figure: change it to match your project.
hours
Default: four weeks at half productivity.

What misunderstanding already costs this project

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Every 1% of effort saved
–
on the work remaining
Rework from domain misunderstanding
–
Clarifying requirements
–
New joiners getting up to speed
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Most likely net saving

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–

–

Remaining labour
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Developer-weeks freed
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Three ways it could go

Gross savings by source, on one scale. The dashed line is the cost of your team's time in alignment sessions.

Rework avoided Less clarification Faster onboarding Your team's time

Where the numbers come from

Each saving is a share of a cost your project already carries.

SourceDownsideMost likelyUpside

Not counted above

Real effects we leave out of the totals because they vary too much between projects.

Mistakes already built

The model's gaps-and-contradictions report finds misunderstandings in work you have already shipped. These are the most expensive defects to find late.

Time to market

Slipping a go-live, a launch window or a regulatory date often costs more than the labour itself.

AI coding assistants

Assistants that work from a compiler-checked model of your business produce fewer domain mistakes than ones guessing from code.

Method and sources
  • Remaining labour = team size × months remaining × productive hours per month × blended rate.
  • Rework avoided = remaining labour × rework share × share caused by domain misunderstanding × prevention rate (15%, 30% or 50%).
  • Less clarification = clarification hours × team × weeks remaining × rate × reduction (20%, 35% or 50%).
  • Faster onboarding = joiners × ramp-up hours × rate × reduction (0%, 50% or 75%).
  • Your team's time = alignment person-days × 8 hours × rate, subtracted from every scenario.
  • Assumptions The 30% rework default is below the range in the research. The share of rework caused by domain misunderstanding (50%), the prevention and reduction rates, and the ramp-up hours are our own assumptions, not research findings. Change any of them.
  • Sources Barry Boehm and Victor Basili, “Software Defect Reduction Top 10 List”, IEEE Computer, 2001 (about 40–50% of effort goes on avoidable rework; fixing a problem after delivery is often far more expensive than in requirements and design). Xin Xia et al., “Measuring Program Comprehension: A Large-Scale Field Study with Professionals”, IEEE TSE, 2018 (78 professional developers; about 58% of their time went on comprehension).
  • This is an estimate to support a decision, not a guarantee. Your actual results depend on your domain, your team and how much of the model you put to work.

Turn the number into a business case

The free whitepaper sets out the research behind these numbers, then takes you from this estimate to a one-page case, the answers to the objections you will hear, and a five-minute script for the steering meeting.

Get the whitepaper →

Check these numbers against your project

In a 20-minute conversation we look at where your team's understanding diverges and whether this estimate holds. No slides, no sales pitch.

Book a 20-minute conversation →