Phase 1 (1 month)

We begin with a discovery phase, a 1 month / £16k project, where we can get an idea of your business and what we can do to help.

Having a rough idea of your overall budget is very useful, as this allows us to determine the scope of the initial development - which could be a 12 month / £200k project.

Overall this phase involves a few informal meetings and discussions with your staff, identifying their current tasks and problems.

The end result is a document outlining the main features we believe your system requires, technical details on the data that will be collected, how processes within the new system will work, and to estimate how this system would effect your business.

This document will be used as a discussion point to ensure we both agree on the scope of the initial development phases, where additional features can be added during later phases.

Phase 2 (1 week)

To ensure you remain in control of the system and code base, we will ask (and help) you to setup the following services:

• Source code repository (preferably GitHub)
• Domain (DNS)
• Hosting
• SSL Certificate
• Google Analytics

We will also expect an initial deposit of 40% to be paid before development begins.

At the same time we will organise for a backup service to be setup, so that this will be ready and tested before any live data is used on the new system.

Phase 3 (3-6 months)

We focus on creating the "minimum viable product".

This is focused on matching your current setup, allowing us to migrate your staff onto the initial web based system.

During development we will be using a "demo" website so your staff can try out new features and give feedback. We generally expect staff to experiment as much as they can on the "demo" site, and they can even try their best to break it!

Migration of your existing services is usually done individually (when possible), and involves an automated process to copy your existing data into the new system. This process is re-run several times during testing, with the final switchover being no different to the many tests before, and the fallback plan (in case of emergencies) is to simply go back to your old system.

At all times we try to avoid a big switch over point, instead focusing on migrating one system/process at a time. This allows us to focus on one area at a time, receive a controlled amount of feedback, and be able to quickly isolate any issues.

Phase 4 (3 months)

Is simply for any features that haven't been covered in the initial development, and may be split into multiple phases.

Phase 5

Depending on how you prefer updates to be handled, we can either set up a regular monthly maintenance contract, where we agree to a set amount of development/support time (e.g. 5 days a month), or we/you create a list of new features, and we quote for the work to be done.

We find that most of our clients prefer a standard monthly invoice, typically about £4k, as this allows us to constantly review improvements to the system, and then it is just down to prioritisation to determine when new features are added. If we find that there is not enough or too much time set aside per month, then the monthly agreement can be updated.

But with larger changes/additions to the system, we may look at a new development phase.

For your reference, support time includes server maintenance, checking error logs, and answering miscellaneous questions about the system.