Lessons from the Field: How to Avoid Budget Overruns in EdTech Software Development

The 4 Common Culprits for Why EdTech Software Budgets Break

Rushed Estimates and Unrealistic Timelines

The problem often starts before the ink is dry. A prospective client shows up with an idea, a wishlist, and a tight deadline. As Eduardo Fernández, Customer Success Manager, shared, “Customers sometimes want a full MVP estimate in a week. That’s not enough time to truly scope something that complex.” Pressure like this can lead to rushed estimates, shallow scoping, and major gaps in planning.

Julio Arias, Director of Engineering, added, “We’ll sometimes suggest a short discovery engagement to ground the project. Because ‘help students with math’ is not a scope; it’s a vision. And you can’t build a product off a vision without first distilling it into technical requirements.”

Big-picture goals like improving student math outcomes are an important north star, but they don’t tell an engineering team what to build, how to build it, or what success looks like. Without that clarity upfront, teams end up making assumptions, revisiting decisions mid-sprint, or uncovering gaps halfway through development that could’ve been solved earlier.

Hidden Complexity and Scope Creep

Some changes are obvious like a new feature request or a pivot in direction. But others hide in plain sight.

“It’s the sum of small changes that turns into a major overage.” —Anai Arroyo, Director of Project Management

Even seemingly tiny details, like a text string that doesn’t read well, can trigger expensive rework if they’re flagged too late in the cycle.

Alejandro Bonilla, Director of QA, explained how one detail nearly sank a two-week sprint: “The client approved everything, features worked, and all tests passed. But they asked us to roll it back because one sentence of text didn’t sound right to them. That was hundreds of hours undone over a single UI tweak.”

In a software build, even a small change carries ripple effects. If that change happens late in the development cycle, it can disrupt the timeline and budget — requiring rollbacks, retesting, redoing approvals, and reallocating hours already spent.

Integration Landmines

Third-party integrations are often treated as plug-and-play. On paper, it looks simple: connect Tool A to Platform B, and you’re done. But in practice, integrations can unravel even the most carefully scoped projects.

Since third-party tools are owned by external vendors, they can shift pricing models or technical requirements without warning, completely outside the client’s or software team’s control.

A vendor might introduce a new pricing tier, deprecate a feature, or change authentication. When that shift happens mid-build, the fallout can be significant.

“We had to find an alternative, retrain our team, and reconfigure tests to keep things moving.” —Alejandro

A resourceful team helps recalibrate without stalling progress or passing surprise costs to the client.

When Small Issues Trigger Big Overages

Not every budget issue comes from a change in direction or feature creep. Sometimes, it’s an overlooked detail or a late-stage request.

Take a login screen: one client’s polished wireframes didn’t include a ‘forgot password’ flow. It wasn’t in the original specs, but it was critical to user experience. Edify paused to assess the impact, re-estimated effort, and collaborated on a timeline adjustment — turning a potential roadblock into trust-building.

Julio shared another scenario: a quick rebrand requested in the final stretch.

“It started with a new logo and color palette. But rebranding meant redesigning UI components and reworking CSS across the product. It added two more weeks to the timeline.” —Julio

Edify’s flexible approach helps preserve momentum, but these examples show an important truth: even small additions carry real weight. The earlier they surface, the easier they are to manage.