A 10-person team where 30% of work comes back once loses about 190 hours and $9,000 a month. That is more than one full-time person doing nothing but redoing things. Your numbers will differ. The math below shows you how to find them.
Nobody counts rework
Rework hides. It does not show up as a line in the budget. It shows up as "the project took longer," "we were slammed this month," and "I spent all Friday on reviews." Because nobody counts it, nobody fixes it.
So let's count it.
The example team
Ten people. Each finishes about eight pieces of work a week. Emails, reports, designs, pages, tickets. Normal stuff.
About 30% of those pieces come back for changes. That is not a bad team. When teams count honestly, 30% is common.
When a piece comes back, the worker spends about 1.5 hours fixing it. The manager spends about half an hour reviewing it again and explaining what was wrong.
Workers cost about $40 an hour all-in. The manager costs about $70.
The math, step by step
Step 1. How many pieces a month? 10 people × 8 pieces × 4 weeks = 320 pieces.
Step 2. How many come back? 320 × 30% = 96 pieces.
Step 3. How many hours does that eat? 96 × 1.5 worker hours = 144 hours. 96 × 0.5 manager hours = 48 hours. Total: 192 hours a month.
Step 4. What does it cost? 144 × $40 = $5,760. 48 × $70 = $3,360. Total: $9,120 a month, or about $109,000 a year.
Step 5. What share of the team is that? Ten people work about 1,600 hours a month. 192 ÷ 1,600 = 12%.
One day in every eight, the whole team is redoing something.
What the number leaves out
The real cost is higher. The math above does not count:
- The days the work sat waiting for review before it came back.
- The person downstream who could not start.
- The client who saw the first version.
- The manager's Friday, gone.
- The feeling, on both sides, that this keeps happening.
Treat $9,000 as the floor.
Find your own number
You need four facts. You probably know three already.
- How many people, and roughly how many pieces each finishes a week.
- What share comes back. If you do not know, count for one week. Make a tick every time you send something back.
- How long a redo takes, for the worker and for you.
- Rough hourly costs.
Put them in the rework cost calculator. It shows the math and lets you change any number to see what happens.
What moves the number most
Play with the calculator and you will see it fast. The biggest lever is the share that comes back. Cutting it from 30% to 15% halves the cost. Making redos faster helps a little. Making the first version right helps a lot.
And the first version is usually wrong for one of two cheap-to-fix reasons: the request was unclear, or nobody checked the work before handing it in. Here are all five causes.
Where M-Tracker fits
M-Tracker attacks the share that comes back. Every task carries a clear brief. When the work is marked done, M-Tracker compares it with the brief and tells the person what is missing, before the manager ever sees it. They fix it while it is fresh. Work reaches the manager right more often.
For the example team, moving from 30% to 15% is worth about $4,500 a month. M-Tracker costs that team between $40 and $80 a month.
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