Software Discovery Phase: Essential Cost and Risk Guide
Two development partners can quote the same brief five times apart, because “we need a system to manage our jobs” is a sentence, not a specification. This guide explains the discovery phase that closes that gap: the seven deliverables you should refuse to sign off without, UK cost bands from a £3,000 single-process engagement to £45,000 for a regulated build, the five-to-ten-per-cent rule for sanity-checking a quote, realistic two-to-twelve-week durations, who has to be in the room, a week-by-week timeline, the warning signs of discovery theatre, and the three legitimate outcomes — including the one where the honest answer is don’t build.
