Find the disagreement in week three, not month eight
The blueprint phase that makes everything after it predictable.
All Technology AdvisoryThe most expensive sentence in software is 'that's not what we meant' — spoken in month eight. Discovery done properly front-loads that conversation into week three, when changing course costs a meeting instead of a rebuild.
- A problem definition your operators sign off on
- Scope decisions made on evidence, before they're expensive
- A blueprint worth keeping even if you build elsewhere
What the work actually involves
Stakeholder & process discovery
Workshops and shadowing across every team the system touches — including the ones nobody invited.
Requirements engineering
Needs written as testable statements with owners, priorities, and the exceptions documented.
Solution blueprinting
Architecture, module map, integration contracts, and phase plan — buildable by any competent team.
Feasibility spikes
The risky assumptions prototyped early: the integration, the data quality, the AI accuracy.
Business case & sequencing
Investment phased so each stage funds confidence in the next, defensible to a board.
Data profiling and readiness
A real extract examined early — duplicates, nulls in fields the new system will require, unit and code consistency across sites — because migration effort tracks data quality rather than record count.
Integration surface mapping
Every system the platform must talk to, what it can actually expose, and at what volume and latency — the line most often underestimated in a build estimate.
What you are handed.
Yours to keep, and written so another team could pick them up.
A problem statement people agree on
Often the hardest artefact, and the one that stops the wrong thing being built.
Process maps of the current state
How it works now, including the workarounds — yours to keep regardless of who builds.
A target architecture
Enough detail to cost and to tender, buildable by any competent team.
A phased plan with exit points
Where you could stop, and what you would have if you did.
The engagement
We do not publish prices — scope drives them. Everything else, here.
- Starts with
- A kickoff, then structured sessions with the people who do the work
- Typical duration
- 4–8 weeks
- Who you get
- A principal architect and a business analyst
- Commercial model
- Fixed fee against defined artefacts
What the answer depends on.
Two sets of conditions. Read both against your own situation — most organisations recognise themselves in one column within a sentence or two.
This is the right call when
- A large build is proposed and nobody can size it confidently.
- Stakeholders disagree on what the problem is.
- You want to tender the build and need a specification worth tendering.
A different approach fits better when
- The scope is settled and you want execution.
- The decision is already made and the review is there to confirm it.
- No access to the people who do the work today.
Questions about product discovery & requirements
Where this comes up most.
The regulatory context and the systems already in the building change the build. Each sector page says how.
More in Technology Advisory
If this is close to what you need but not quite it, that gap is usually the useful part of a first call — discuss this capability.