How we work
Waterfall for the plan. Agile for the build.
The plan is fixed and written down before anything gets built. The build itself moves milestone by milestone, and you see each one land. Here is the whole thing, in order, with nothing left vague.
Waterfall for the plan
- Discovery
- Specification
- Agreed
Fixed up front, in writing, before real build work starts.
Agile for the build
- We build
- You look at it
- We adjust
↻ repeats inside every milestone
You see each one land, and you pay as it does.
01
Discovery
We’ll keep asking the right questions until we genuinely understand it. No time limit, and free for websites.
Discovery happens before anything is quoted. We ask what the software actually has to do, who touches it, what happens when it goes wrong, and what you already run that it has to sit alongside. Roughly half of that you will have thought about already. The other half is usually where projects come unstuck later.
For a website, none of that time is billed. For a web application or platform there is a discovery fee, agreed in writing before discovery starts and credited in full against the build if you go ahead. If you don’t, the written specification is yours, written so that any good developer can build from it, so nothing is repeated and nothing is lost. There is no clock on it either way. A price written from a half-understood problem is a guess, and a guess is what turns into an argument in week six.
02
Specification
Everything written down and agreed, so nobody discovers a surprise in week six.
The specification sets out what is being built, what each milestone contains, and what it costs. This is the waterfall half: the plan is fixed up front, in writing, before real build work starts.
You read it, you challenge it, and then you agree it. From that point both of us are working from the same document, and “I assumed” stops being part of the conversation.
03
Prototype
Something real to click through, before you pay for the build.
Not a picture of the product — the product, far enough along that you can use it and tell us where it is wrong. AI leverage is what makes this possible to offer: fewer man-hours means we can build something real before you have committed to the build.
If it is not right, you walk away. There is no build deposit to recover and nothing to cancel.
04
Build
Milestone by milestone. You see it as it grows and you pay as each one lands.
Inside a milestone the work is agile — we build, you look at it, we adjust. Across milestones it follows the specification you already agreed. The hybrid is deliberate: the fixed plan protects the budget, and the iterative build protects the result.
Payment is released as each milestone lands, so you are never paying for work you have not seen.
05
Communication
One point of contact, and it is the person building the thing. No account manager, no telephone game, no context lost handing over between team members.
Everything runs in one thread, so why a decision was taken is still findable in month six rather than scattered across four inboxes. Work is backed up daily.
If something is quicker said than written, call. Nothing has to go through a queue first.
06
Changes
Reasonable changes are absorbed without a new invoice. If a change genuinely alters the scope we agreed, we tell you before doing it and you decide.
Projects move. You use the prototype and realise a screen needs a field it did not have, or that a rule works differently in practice than it read on paper. That is normal, and it gets absorbed.
What gets raised is the change that genuinely alters agreed scope — a new module, another user role, a payment method that was never in the plan. You hear what it means for the timeline and the price before it is built, and it is your call.
07
Handover
Code, repository, credentials and IP. All yours, in writing.
On final payment it all transfers to you in full — the code, the repository, every credential, and the intellectual property. Not a licence to keep using it while you keep paying us. Ownership.
Hosting renewal is agreed per project rather than assumed, so continuing with us stays a decision you make rather than one you inherit.
Tell us what you're trying to build.
Six short questions, about a minute. We'll turn it into a proper written brief and send it to you — whether you go ahead with us or not.
We reply the same working day.