Body of Knowledge · Techniques and Models
Total cost of ownership
The full lifetime cost of a capability, meaning build cost plus maintenance forever, or purchase price plus integration, lock-in and exit. It is the corrective to every claim that something is "cheaper".
Evidence grade: practice A widely adopted practitioner model with clear provenance.
Use it when
Build-versus-buy, platform investment, vendor selection.
Where it stops working
Long-horizon costs are estimates. The discipline is to name them explicitly so they can be argued over, without computing them to a false precision.
Where the standard uses it
- SV-4Engineering economicsHeadcount, budget, cost of delivery, vendors, and build/buy/AI decisions.
Used alongside it
- Build, buy, or AI service practice
- Core versus context practice
- Headcount as investment practice
- Sunk-cost discipline research
Cite this model
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Total cost of ownership. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, TEC.total-cost-of-ownership). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/techniques/total-cost-of-ownership