Why I start with a paid discovery
Five days of research before a single line of code exists. Why that is cheaper than building straight away, and exactly what you get for it.
The most expensive mistake in software is not the wrong database or the wrong framework. It is six weeks spent building the wrong idea. Yet most companies decide on the basis of a two-page quote and a gut feeling.
What a discovery is
Five working days in which we strip the problem back, design the core screens and deliver a clickable prototype. You walk through it yourself, show it to your team and find out within a week whether it fits the way you work.
What it does not get you
No production software. Anyone who promises you a working application in five days delivers something that has to be rebuilt later anyway. A prototype is more honest: it costs less and it answers exactly the question you have at that moment.
What you take away
- A clickable prototype of the core screens
- A written scope: what is in and what is not
- The data model and the technical approach in outline
- A fixed price and planning for the full build
What it costs
€ 1,500. If you go ahead with the build, that amount comes off the build price in full. If you decide not to build, you reached that conclusion for € 1,500 instead of € 25,000.
And if the answer is no?
Then I say so. Sometimes the answer is an off-the-shelf package, a changed process, or simply waiting a while longer. A project that should never have existed does nobody any good, and in the long run that costs me more than those five days.