The discovery phase: what the client pays for and what they get to keep

Short answer: discovery exists so that the price of a project can be named precisely rather than as a range several times wide. Over a few weeks the vendor works through your process, your data and your integrations. What you get in your hands is a process description, a list of integrations with their actual condition, an estimate broken into stages, and a prototype of the key screens. Those documents should stay with you, so that you can take them to any vendor.

We quote in roubles, so the figures below are given as proportions and timelines rather than converted amounts — convert at the rate of the day if you need an absolute number, or ask us for a quote.

Why it is needed

At the first meeting the vendor knows two paragraphs about your problem. The honest answer to a question about price at that moment is a range, and for a B2B platform that range is wide.

It is wide because the things that matter are unknown: how many roles and exceptions the process has, what condition the data is in, whether the old systems have an API. Discovery answers those questions before the expensive part of the work begins.

What happens in it

Interviews with the people in the process. With the manager who is commissioning the system, and with the people who will work in it. The exceptions and the workarounds are known to them specifically.

A look at the data. The vendor opens real exports: how many records there are, whether there are duplicates, what sits in comment fields instead of proper ones. There is more on that in migrating data from an old system.

A check on the integrations. For every system that has to exchange data, the question is whether an API exists, who maintains it and whether there is test access. One integration without an API can cost as much as the rest of the system.

A prototype. Clickable screens for the main scenarios. On those, users see the system for the first time and say what is missing from it, while fixing that costs an hour of a designer’s time.

What you end up holding

• a description of the process with roles and exceptions;
• a list of integrations with the difficulty of each assessed;
• data requirements and a migration plan;
• a prototype of the key screens;
• an estimate by stages, with a first stage that can start immediately.

This is a specification assembled out of facts. It can be handed to another vendor to get a comparable estimate, and that right is worth writing into the discovery contract.

Why it is paid for separately

Discovery takes the time of an analyst, an architect and a designer. A vendor who does it free builds the cost into the project price, and then you pay for it only if you picked that vendor. That ties you to them before you have had a chance to test them.

Paid discovery also works as the test: a few weeks show how the vendor asks questions and holds dates. There is more on that in how to choose a development vendor.

When you can do without it

If the task is small and well described, a one-way exchange of product references between an accounting system and a website for instance, the vendor can name a price after one or two meetings. Discovery there turns into paperwork for its own sake.

It is needed when the project has several roles, several systems, or data coming across from an old system. Which is to say, almost whenever the range at the first meeting is wider than one and a half times.

What to ask before it starts

Which documents will exist at the end, and in what form. Who on the vendor’s side runs the interviews. How many hours it needs from your own staff. Whether the result includes an estimate by stages with figures. And above all: can the result be used with a different vendor.

Common questions

How long does discovery take? For one role and a couple of integrations, two or three weeks is enough. Replacing a large accounting system such as SAP takes months, because there are an order of magnitude more processes and more data.

Does its cost count towards the project? With many vendors it does, if the project goes ahead with them. Compare the full project price all the same, otherwise the credit turns into a discount on paper.

Can we run discovery ourselves? The process description and the data exports, yes, and that shortens the vendor’s work. Assessing integrations and timelines without development experience is hard.

The rule

If a vendor gives you a range wider than one and a half times, ask for discovery with a stage-by-stage estimate as its output and the right to hand that output to any vendor.