We price the discovery, then give it away

Two weeks, a fixed fee, and a document you keep whether or not you continue with us. It sounds like a giveaway. It is the most self-interested thing we do.

The alternative is the free proposal, and the free proposal is where the trouble starts. Work given away has to be paid for somewhere, so it is paid for in guesses. A studio that has spent nothing understanding your problem will price the fear rather than the work, and then spend the project trying to make the guess come true.

What the two weeks are actually for

Sitting with the people who do the job today. Watching the spreadsheet, the whiteboard, the group chat that the software is meant to replace. Reading the integration documentation of whatever you already run, because that is where the surprises live. Then writing down what we found in language you can hand to somebody else.

• The workflow as it is, not as the org chart says it is
• What we would build, in what order, and what we would leave out
• The integrations, with the specific parts that will be difficult
• A price, and the assumptions it depends on

If the document is only useful when you hire us, it was a sales deck with a longer run time.

Why you keep it either way

Because it is yours. You paid for it. If you take it to another studio and get a better price, the comparison is at least between two people costing the same piece of work rather than two people imagining different ones. We would rather lose that way than win by being the vaguest quote in the pile.

What it does to us

It removes the incentive to pad. A number written after two weeks of looking is a number we have to defend with reasons, which means it tends to be smaller and it tends to be right. It also ends the conversations that should end — occasionally the honest conclusion is that the thing should not be built, or should be bought, and saying so in week two costs everybody far less than discovering it in month five.

The one condition

We ask for access to the people doing the work, not only to the people commissioning it. A discovery run entirely in a meeting room with stakeholders produces a document about what everyone hopes is happening. That is the version nobody should pay for.