You will always know what happens next.
Four stages. Fixed scope, agreed in writing before I start, so the number you are quoted is the number you pay. Here is exactly how it runs, what I do, and what I need from you at each stage.
Scope
One to two weeks
Design
Two to four weeks
Build
Four to sixteen weeks
Launch
One week, then a month on call
Scope
One to two weeks
I work out what it needs to do, who touches it, and what it costs.
- Bring the problem you are trying to solve, in whatever shape it currently lives in.
- Answer questions about how the work actually happens today, not how it is supposed to happen.
- Introduce me to the one or two people whose job the software will change most.
- Two or three working sessions, on a call, recorded so nobody is taking notes instead of thinking.
- A written specification: every screen, every user type, every rule, every integration.
- A fixed price and a dated schedule, both in writing.
A specification and a number. Yours to keep, whether or not you hire me for the build.
Design
Two to four weeks
Screens and flows built to your brand standards, signed off before anything gets engineered.
- Share your brand assets, or tell me to start from scratch.
- Walk through the flows with me and say plainly where they do not match how you work.
- Sign off in writing when the design is right.
- A visual system: type, colour, spacing, components.
- Every screen designed at the fidelity it will ship at, including the admin side.
- Two rounds of revisions built into the price. Further rounds are quoted separately and honestly.
A complete design file. What gets built is what you approved.
Build
Four to sixteen weeks
Development in visible stages with a live preview link. You watch it come together.
- Log into the preview whenever you like and tell me what feels wrong.
- Provide the real content and the real data as soon as you can. Placeholder text hides problems.
- Weekly fifteen minute check in, on video, with whoever from your side needs to be there.
- Front end, back end, database, integrations. Built and tested against the specification.
- A live preview link updated as work lands, so you can see progress rather than take my word for it.
- Written weekly notes: what shipped, what is next, anything that needs a decision from you.
A working system on a staging environment, ready to be filled with real data and switched on.
Launch
One week, then a month on call
I migrate, test, and go live. Then I train your team and hand over the keys.
- give me a launch date that works around your business, not around the software.
- Send the team members who need to run the thing to a one hour training session.
- Tell me in the first month when something is not behaving. That is what the month is for.
- Data migration and a full pre launch test pass, on the real environment, with the real accounts.
- Go live, with someone on the phone for the switch over rather than an email chain.
- Documentation, training, and thirty days of support included. No new charges in that month.
Your team running the software on their own, on infrastructure in your name, with everything documented.
The rules I hold ourselves to.
The stages describe what happens. These describe how it happens. Both matter, and neither one is negotiable.
Fixed scope, fixed price
The specification is agreed in writing before I start. If I underestimate the work, that is my problem to absorb, not yours. If you change the scope, I requote in writing before anything changes.
One person builds it, and you talk to them
You will not be handed to an account manager who relays your questions. The person answering the email is the person writing the code.
Nothing hidden until launch day
A live preview link goes up in the first week of the build. You see the work as it happens rather than at a big reveal at the end.
Written over verbal, always
Decisions live in the specification. Meeting notes go to email the same day. If it is not written down, it did not happen.
Your calendar, not mine
The schedule is set around your launch window, your team, and your quiet season. If waiting six weeks makes the launch easier, I wait six weeks.
Straight answers.
That is normal, and it is what scoping is for. Bring the problem you are trying to solve. Turning that into a specification is my job, not yours.
It usually does, at the edges. Small changes are absorbed. Anything meaningful gets requoted in writing before I touch it, so you always know what you are paying for.
Heavily during scoping, lightly during the build, and properly again at handover. Roughly five to eight hours a week during scope, one hour a week during build, and half a day for launch training.
Sometimes. If a launch date is fixed by an event or a season, tell me during scoping and I will design around it or tell you honestly that it is not realistic. I will not agree to a date I cannot hit.
The code is in your repository, the database is on your account, the domain is in your name, and the specification documents everything. Any competent developer can pick it up. That is by design.
Yes, on request, before the scoping call. I work on a lot of things that are not public yet.
Book the scoping call.
Thirty minutes. I work out what it should do, roughly what it takes, and whether I am the right studio to build it. Free, and yours to keep either way.
Marked fields are required.