Custom Software Development

Most businesses do not need custom software. They need two products they already pay for to exchange information, or one spreadsheet to stop being a system of record. That is usually a smaller job than it looks, and we would rather quote the smaller job.

When custom really is the answer, it is quoted per project after a written scope, because a number given before the scope exists is a number somebody is going to be unhappy about later.

What it costs

Priced per project Every project starts with a written scope naming what is included, what is not, and what the first payment triggers. The quote follows the scope, never the other way round.

How it works

1. We write down what it has to doNumbered requirements, each marked required or optional, each one something you can later point at and check. This is the document the project is measured against.
2. We quote against that documentHours by area, a total, and a payment schedule tied to phases. What triggers each payment is written next to it.
3. You accept against it tooAcceptance is the required items working, verified with you. Not an opinion about whether it looks finished.

Who this is for

• A business running its core process in a spreadsheet that three people edit and nobody backs up.
• A business paying staff to copy the same information between two systems every day.
• A business whose industry software does nine of the ten things it needs, with the tenth done by hand.

Who this is not for

An existing product already does it

Then buy the product. Custom software costs more to build and far more to keep alive, and choosing it when something off the shelf fits is a decision you pay for every year afterwards.

You want a fixed price before a scope exists

We will not give you one. A number quoted against a conversation is a number that gets revised, and the revision is where the relationship goes wrong.

Nobody at your business can answer questions during the build

Then it will not finish well. Custom work needs somebody who can decide, reachable in the same week the question is asked.

Worth having alongside

• Business Automation Consulting$750 to find out whether the answer is custom software or a setting somebody never turned on.›
• System 7xQuotes, invoices, appointments, inventory and service reports already exist as a product. Building them again is the expensive way to get them.›
• IT Strategy ConsultingIf the question is what to build at all, that is an hour or two of planning rather than a project.›