Decide what to build before you pay to build it
The most expensive engineering decisions are made before any code is written. A short, structured strategy engagement is the cheapest opportunity you will get to change your mind.
Define your first release and plan the roadmap
- A feature list that has grown well past the available budget
- Founders who need a defensible plan before raising or committing
- Teams that cannot agree on what the first release should contain
- Anyone who has been quoted a year for something they need in three months
The work this covers
Scope definition
A week of hard conversations about what to leave out. The output is a build list where every item can justify its place.
Feature prioritisation
Ranking by cost against evidence of value, so trade-offs are made explicitly rather than by whoever is most persistent.
Costed roadmap
A sequenced plan with real estimates and the assumptions written down, in a form a board or an investor will accept.
Technical due diligence
An independent assessment of an existing codebase, team or vendor - for investors, or for you before you commit.
From first call to something you own
- 01
Name the assumption
Every product rests on one belief that, if wrong, makes the rest irrelevant. We identify it and plan the work to test exactly that.
- 02
Cut ruthlessly
Anything that does not test the assumption goes on a "later" list. That list is real and we revisit it after launch.
- 03
Cost what remains
Each item estimated with its assumptions stated, so you can see what you are buying and what would change the number.
- 04
Sequence for evidence
Ordered so the riskiest question gets answered soonest, not so the easiest work happens first.
What we tend to build this on
Not a fixed list. If your team already runs something else and runs it well, we work in that.
- Discovery workshops
- User interviews
- Story mapping
- Prototyping
- Technical spikes
- Estimation
Before you ask
- Do we have to build with you afterwards?
- No, and the deliverable is deliberately built so you do not have to. Plenty of clients take the roadmap to their own team or to another firm. A strategy engagement that only works if you hire us is not strategy.
- What do we actually get?
- A prioritised and costed build list, the assumptions behind it, a sequenced roadmap, and usually a clickable prototype of the core flow. Enough to brief any competent engineering team.
- How is it priced?
- A fixed fee for a fixed scope, agreed before we start. Typically €8,000 to €25,000 depending on length and how much research is involved.
Tell us what you are trying to build
A 30-minute call is usually enough to tell you whether we are the right fit, what it is likely to cost, and how long it will take. No deck, no sales script.