Custom software and hardware projects rarely fail because the team could not write the code. They fail because something nobody checked turned out to be true: the old system had no API, the data was not where everyone thought, the sensor could not survive the environment, or the real process was different from the one in the brief.
Discovery is where you find those things out, before they cost a full build.
What discovery is
A short phase, with a fixed price, before development starts. It answers four questions:
- Can it be built? Technically, with your systems, data and environment.
- What exactly? The scope: what is in, what is out, and what comes later.
- What are the risks? The things that could stop or delay the project, and how to test them early.
- What will it cost? An estimate based on what was found, not on a guess.
What happens during discovery
- We interview the people who do the work, not only the people who asked for the project.
- We review the existing systems, their data and their APIs.
- For hardware, we look at the site, the equipment and the conditions it has to work in.
- Where one assumption decides everything, we test it with a quick prototype.
- We write up options, with their trade-offs.
What you receive at the end
- A clear description of the problem and the proposed solution.
- The scope, the deliverables and the success criteria.
- The main risks and how they will be handled.
- A timeline and a cost estimate for the build.
The result is yours. You can build with us, with someone else, or decide not to build at all.
Why pay for it
Free estimates are made before anyone has looked at your systems, so they are padded or optimistic. Either way you pay later: in a larger budget, in change requests, or in a project that stops halfway. A paid discovery is a small, known cost that makes the large one predictable. It also means the team has actually worked on your problem before you commit to them.
When you can skip it
If the work is small, well understood and uses systems everyone knows, a discovery phase adds little. Ask for a fixed quote instead. Discovery pays for itself when the project is new for you, touches several systems or involves hardware.
Discovery is step two of how we work, after a first conversation about your goals. See how we work, or tell us about your project.
