Two weeks of thinking, so you don't spend six months guessing.
The expensive part of a software project is almost never the code. It is the fourth month, when everyone realises the thing being built solves a problem nobody has, or that the integration everyone assumed was an API is a nightly CSV. Discovery is where you find that out for the price of two weeks rather than the price of a team.
This is for you if
- You have a budget approved and no scope anyone can defend to the person who approved it
- Three quotes came back at wildly different numbers, which means all three scoped something different
- The idea lives in one person's head, and everyone else is nodding at a different version of it
- You need to know what this costs before you can decide whether to do it at all
It isn't, if
- You already have a written spec, wireframes and a decision. Do not buy a workshop to confirm what you know. Ask us to quote the build.
- You want us to validate a decision that has already been made. We will tell you what we find, which is only useful if you are willing to hear it.
- The project is small enough that two weeks of discovery is a meaningful share of the budget. Below roughly $25k, discovery is the build's first week.
What actually happens.
- 01
Interviews, not a kickoff deck
We talk to the people who do the work today, not only the people sponsoring the project. That is where the undocumented steps live, and undocumented steps are what turn an estimate into a surprise.
- 02
Scope, split into phases
Each phase gets its own estimate and its own exit point, so the decision to continue is made four times rather than once at the beginning with the least information you will ever have.
- 03
Prototype the risky screens
Two or three screens the product lives or dies on, clickable. Argument about a layout is cheap here and expensive once it is built, and a prototype ends the argument faster than a document.
- 04
Architecture, estimate, and the risk register
The stack recommendation with its trade-offs written down, a costed estimate per phase, and a plain list of what would blow the budget. All of it is yours whether or not we build it.
What you get
- A scope broken into phases, each with its own estimate and its own exit
- Architecture and stack recommendation with the trade-offs written down
- Clickable prototype of the two or three screens the product lives or dies on
- A risk register naming what would blow the budget, before it does
Built with
- Miro
- Figma
- Architecture
- Estimation
- Risk
The outcome
A plan you could hand to any competent team, including one that isn't us.
Two weeks to turn a vague idea into a scope, a stack, an estimate, and a written list of what could go wrong.
Get a free consultationScope and a fixed price before anything is committed. No obligation to proceed.
No dark periods. No surprise invoices.
A structured engagement from the first call to launch, so you always know what is happening and what it costs.
Week 1 · Discovery
Scope & fixed price
Then, every week after
A working demo.
The ones people actually ask.
Do we have to build it with you afterwards?
No, and the output is deliberately written so you do not have to. Everything is handed over in a form another team could quote from. If discovery only makes sense as a funnel into our own build, it is not really discovery.
What does a discovery workshop cost?
It is quoted as a fixed price against a fixed two weeks, and the number depends on how many systems and teams are involved. You get that number before it starts, not after.
How much of our team's time does it take?
Roughly six to ten hours across the two weeks, spread over interviews and two review sessions. If nobody on your side can spare that, discovery will produce a document rather than an answer, and we would rather say so up front.
What if the answer is that we shouldn't build it?
Then that is the deliverable, and it is the cheapest one on this site. It has happened, and the clients it happened to are the ones who came back.
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What is the most expensive thing your team still does by hand?
Tell us, and we'll tell you honestly whether software can fix it, and roughly what it would cost. No pitch deck.