What is discovery, and why am I paying for it?

It is a fair challenge. You are paying before anything exists.

What it actually is

Two weeks of structured work. I interview the people who do the job — not their managers describing it, them. I watch the process happen. I map where information enters, where it waits, and where it goes wrong. Then I score every opportunity found by impact and effort, with a named source against each one.

You get a document that says: here is what is costing you, here is what to do about it, in what order, and roughly what each would cost.

Why it is not free

Free discovery gets one meeting with whoever was available. Paid discovery gets me the field engineer, the person in accounts, and the one who has been there nineteen years. That access is the whole value, and it does not appear without an invoice justifying the time.

The test of a good one

You should be able to take it to another supplier and get a sensible quote from it. If you cannot, it was a sales document wearing a costume.

One client asked me to imagine exactly that — putting it in front of other developers and asking what they would build it for. Good. That is what it is for. If my discovery only works if I do the build, I have written a brochure.

What it should cost

Proportionate to the build it precedes — broadly 20 to 30 per cent of the likely build value. Much less and it is a token gesture. Much more and it has become the project.