Insight
We start by trying to talk you out of it
Discovery exists to work out whether the software should be built at all. Sometimes the answer is no, and saying so early is the whole point.
Every project we take on starts with a conversation about whether it should exist. Not as a rhetorical move — we have ended discovery by recommending a £30-a-month product and sending no invoice.
Why that is not against our interests
Software you did not need is software you resent paying to maintain. It gets abandoned, and the abandonment gets attributed to whoever built it. A project that should not have started damages us more slowly and more thoroughly than one we declined.
What we are actually looking for
Whether the pain is real and measurable, or a frustration that would survive the rebuild. Whether the process you describe is the process that happens — those are different documents in most businesses, and the gap between them is where projects fail.
Whether an existing product covers eighty per cent of it. If it does, buy the product and spend the difference on the twenty per cent that is actually yours.
What you get either way
A written scope, a fixed price range, and a clear recommendation — including the recommendation not to proceed. It is a cheaper conversation than the alternative, and you can have it before committing to anything.