D Time and Materials in Practice: Lessons from Real LATAM Collaborations
Por Redacción Aguayo
In the dynamic landscape of technology and design, particularly in the vibrant and often unpredictable region of Latin America (LATAM), contracting and project management models are crucial for success. The Fixed Price scheme offers budgetary certainty but often strangles the flexibility that is a pillar of User-Centered Design (UCD). On the other hand, the Time and Materials (T&M) model, which budgets for work time and resources used, has solidified itself as a powerful tool for UX/UI projects where research and iteration are fundamental.
This model, by offering superior flexibility, allows design teams to react to user research discoveries, pivot based on usability tests, and ultimately deliver a more relevant and valuable product. However, its success in LATAM is not without challenges: it demands rigorous discipline, transparent communication, and, above all, a strategic alignment that transcends mere hourly billing. This blog post explores the most valuable practical lessons learned from real collaborations in the region, focusing on how UX/UI design can flourish and demonstrate its intrinsic value within the fluid T&M structure. The key is not just billing for hours, but ensuring that every billed hour generates measurable value for both the business and the user.
Navigating Volatility with Purpose
The Time and Materials model, by its very nature, thrives in environments of high uncertainty, which is common in Latin American markets and tech ecosystems. Projects that aim for significant disruption, enter unexplored market niches, or require deep integration with legacy systems benefit immensely from the elasticity of T&M. Unlike Fixed Price, which mandates a pre-defined scope and limits the ability to respond to evidence (the cornerstone of UX), T&M allows the design scope to evolve as the team learns about the user and the market.
The trap, and the most frequent lesson from regional fail cases, is mistaking this flexibility for a lack of structure. A successful T&M collaboration in UX/UI is not a blank check; it is a contract of trust and visibility. It requires a proactive approach to managing scope, prioritization, and, crucially, the communication of generated value. The role of the UX/UI specialist, in this context, transforms from a mere executor into a strategic partner who manages uncertainty through knowledge.
1. From Tactical to Strategic UX: A Mindset Shift
The first major learning in LATAM is the necessity of elevating the UX/UI role from a purely tactical function to an essentially strategic one, especially under T&M.
The Tactical Approach: Reacting to the Problem
Historically, many projects in the region have viewed UX as a "cosmetic service" or a final phase of "making the screens pretty" (UI First). Under this tactical approach, the UX/UI team operates reactively: they implement visual or interaction changes when a developer or internal stakeholder identifies a superficial problem (a button isn't understood, a flow is too long).
In a T&M scheme, this tactical approach is extremely dangerous. If the team merely implements reactive requests without questioning the root of the problem or measuring its impact, the bill quickly grows without a proportional increase in business value or user satisfaction. Clients, upon receiving increasing invoices for "design hours," become skeptical and perceive T&M as an uncontrolled risk. This is the root of the most common distrust toward this model.
The Strategic Approach: Anticipating and Solving
Successful T&M collaboration demands that the design team adopts a strategic mindset. This means shifting the focus from "designing the solution" to "defining the right problem to solve."
- From Request to Insight: Instead of accepting a requirement like "make button X blue," the strategic designer asks: "What is the business objective that button X should achieve (e.g., increase conversion)?", "What evidence do we have that the color is the problem?", and, most importantly, "How can we measure the impact of any change?".
- Value-Driven Backlog Management: In a T&M project, the design backlog becomes a living tool for risk and opportunity management. Activities (user research, wireframing, prototyping, testing) are not chosen just for urgency, but for their potential impact/risk reduction relative to the effort (billable hours).
This approach transforms T&M hours from a cost into an investment that reduces the need for costly later corrections—an argument that resonates powerfully with budget-conscious LATAM clients.
UX in the Boardroom:
The UX/UI specialist in T&M must learn to speak the language of business. Presenting wireframes or user maps is not enough; it is imperative to link every activity to business metrics.
UX ActivityTypical Business MetricT&M Argument for InvestmentUsability TestingTask completion rate, Time on taskReduce development time due to corrections, increase user operational efficiency.Contextual ResearchUser retention, NPSIdentify unmet needs to ensure product differentiation and long-term loyalty.Critical Flow RedesignConversion rate, Cart abandonmentOptimize direct revenue flow or reduce support cost.Exportar a Hojas de cálculo
By presenting T&M hours as the cost of acquiring valuable information that guides subsequent development investment (which is usually the largest), the design team justifies its strategic role and the flexibility inherent in the model.
2. Prioritizing the Essential: Using Evidence for Tough Decisions
Budget management is the biggest point of friction in T&M. In LATAM, where economic variations can impact budgets from one quarter to the next, the UX/UI team's ability to prioritize without sentimentality and defend their position with evidence is critical.
Focus on the Problem, Not the Solution
A crucial lesson is the discipline to decouple solutions from problems. An efficient T&M team doesn't fall in love with a particular design (a solution), but with the problem it is solving.
- "Test and Discard" Methodology: Instead of spending months perfecting a prototype, the T&M mindset must be agile. The minimum billable hours are invested to create a Design MVP (Minimum Viable Product of Design), it's quickly validated with real users, and the data is used to decide: iterate (with a clear justification for why those extra T&M hours are necessary) or discard that line of work. The ability of a UX/UI lead to kill designs based on evidence is a superpower in T&M, as it avoids wasted hours.
- Avoiding Unjustified Scope Creep: Last-minute requests or scope changes are inevitable. In T&M, managing these changes must be rigorous: every new task must pass through an impact/effort filter, and the justification for dedicating T&M hours must be explicitly documented and approved by the client. "Yes, we can add that feature, it will cost X extra hours, and we expect impact Y on conversion, shall we proceed?" is the correct way to manage it.
Prioritization of Impact vs. Effort
The Impact vs. Effort matrix is the T&M roadmap. However, in the UX/UI context, "impact" must be directly related to reducing the most acute user pain points.
- Identify Maximum Pain: Use research insights to classify usability problems and pain points by their frequency and intensity. Not all usability errors have the same impact. The UX/UI team should allocate their T&M hours to eliminating the pain points that generate the most abandonment or require the most customer support time (a direct cost to the company).
- Calculate Effort (Hours): The design effort (T&M hours) must include not only design and prototyping but also testing time. One learned lesson is never to underestimate validation time. It is better to bill for one hour of efficient testing than three hours of correcting an undetected error.
- Visualize Priority: When presenting the next week's task list (the hours to be billed), showing the prioritization matrix gives the client visibility and control. They can see that the T&M hours are being invested in the "High Impact, Low Effort" quadrant, which maximizes perceived value.
The Voice of the Customer as Guide
User Research is, ironically, the UX activity most susceptible to being cut by cost-sensitive clients in T&M. Nevertheless, the most successful companies in LATAM that use T&M for UX/UI have learned to sell research as a mechanism for savings and investment protection.
Research (interviews, surveys, tests) under T&M must be structured in defined and limited hour packages, with clear deliverables linked to a key decision. Instead of "a week of research," it is defined: "15 T&M hours to conduct 5 validation interviews and a Top 3 Insights report that will determine if we proceed with Feature A or pivot to Feature B."
The lesson is clear: the evidence obtained by research is what justifies the flexibility and, therefore, the hours of the T&M model. Without a solid data foundation, T&M becomes design by opinion—a costly and unproductive path.
3. Communication and Collaboration: UX as a Strategic Partner
The T&M model inherently depends on transparency. In UX/UI projects in LATAM, this translates into proactive, value-centric communication, which cements client trust.
Speaking the Language of Business
The most common mistake is sending billing reports with overly technical or ambiguous activity descriptions. "3 hours on Wireframing the mobile Checkout" says nothing to the CEO. The practical lesson is to adopt the language of the result.
- Value-Oriented Activity Reports: Descriptions must be translated into a potential business impact: "3 hours on A/B Design and Prototyping of the payment screen (High Abandonment Rate) to reduce friction in the critical revenue flow." This links the billed hour to a strategic purpose, not just a design deliverable.
- Review Sessions Not Just for Design: Weekly progress meetings should not be limited to interface review. They should be an instance to review the burn rate (consumed budget), the current scope, and the learning gained from the last hours invested. Showing the client the insights dashboard from the latest usability tests and how this insight avoided a costly development correction is the best way to justify the T&M structure.
Cross-Departmental Collaboration
In T&M UX/UI projects in LATAM, collaboration occurs not only between the design and development teams but also with key client departments (sales, marketing, customer support).
- UX as the Knowledge Hub: The UX/UI team, by conducting research, becomes the owner of user knowledge. Under T&M, dedicating hours to actively transfer that knowledge is justified. For example, 5 hours a month can be allocated to an insights sharing workshop with the support team. This not only generates value for the client (improving customer service) but also ensures that the knowledge acquired with T&M is capitalized internally, reinforcing the perception of the consultancy as a valuable partner.
- Early Integration with Devs: To ensure that T&M hours dedicated to design translate into functional code without waste, collaboration with developers (Devs) must be constant. It's an essential lesson in LATAM, where technical capabilities can vary: including a Dev lead in the prototype review before final approval can save dozens of hours of redesign. T&M design hours dedicated to "Technical Feasibility Validation" are justified as an investment to prevent waste in later phases.
UX as a Change Facilitator
Finally, success under T&M in the region hinges on the UX/UI team positioning itself as a change facilitator. The model's flexibility allows the design not only to adapt to the user but also to the client's organizational culture.
- Fostering UX Maturity: The team should dedicate a controlled portion of their T&M hours to activities that elevate the client's UX maturity, such as creating a Design System. While it may seem like a "cost" in the short term, the lesson is that a Design System reduces friction and delivery time in the future, making the T&M model more efficient long-term and demonstrating a commitment as a strategic partner.
By embracing discipline, billing transparency, and a strategic mindset, the Time and Materials model becomes the perfect canvas for UX/UI to maximize its value in the volatile yet promising reality of projects in Latin America. The goal is not to spend hours, but to invest in insights.
Conclusion: Transcending the simple vendor-client relationship
The Time and Materials model, in the context of UX/UI projects in Latin America, transcends the simple vendor-client relationship, establishing itself as a true strategic partnership contract. The fundamental lesson drawn from the most successful collaborations in the region is that the flexibility inherent in T&M is an advantage, but it demands iron discipline in managing and justifying every billed hour.
Success is not measured by the quantity of deliverables, but by the magnitude of business value that each design activity manages to unlock. This requires a deep change in the design team's mindset: from a tactical executor to an information strategist. The designer must learn to quantify the impact of their decisions in terms of development cost savings, conversion increase, or operational friction reduction.
Radical transparency is the cement of trust in T&M. Billing must cease to be a simple list of tasks and transform into an insight investment report, where every line item of expenditure is directly linked to a critical business decision validated by the user. Prioritizing with evidence, using User Research not as an expense but as insurance against waste, has proven to be the most effective practice for controlling scope creep without stifling innovation.
By integrating the UX/UI team early with the client's business, development, and support areas, the T&M model maximizes return. The designer, as a knowledge facilitator, ensures that the investment in T&M hours is capitalized and infused into the client's organizational culture. The lessons from LATAM are clear: for Time and Materials to work in UX/UI, trust must be actively built with results-oriented reporting and communication that speaks the language of impact. This model, when well-managed, is the most powerful vehicle for building user-centric, relevant, and profitable digital products in such a dynamic and challenging business environment. The key is not to just count the hours, but to make every single one of them count profoundly.
