Planning & strategy
Let's explore your idea. Using our experience of launching over 100 tech startups, we'll pull together a blueprint for you and give you insights into the tech you'll need to achieve it.
Explore your idea and let us put together a technical blueprint for you
- Starting point for 99% of our projects
- Collaborative and creative workshop sessions
- Persona analysis
- Monetisation strategy
- User journey mapping
- Room full of multi-talented experts to help you
- Fully costed and itemised proposal at the end
- Deep dive into your idea and the technical requirements
- 5* rating by previous clients
What is it?
As the typical entry point to working with us, planning & strategy is our approach to fully understanding your requirements, and applying our expertise and knowledge to come up with the best technical solutions. There is no one-size fits all when it comes to developing software and we are approached by clients who are all at different stages of their journey, and to accommodate this, we execute planning & strategy at our standard day rate of £650+VAT per day. This is the same rate for anything that we provide to you as a service to get your app launched - whether that is development, design, testing, UX/UI, product strategy…you name it, it’s all the same rate to keep it simple.
This service is designed to let us really get under the bonnet of your product and take everything out of your brains and put it into the brains of our experts. We know your product will not operate in a vacuum and therefore getting a firm understanding of your business and operations gives us the right level of information we need to come up with the most elegant software solution. Planning and strategy starts off with a workshop session with the client, where we follow a tried and tested format to extract the most important information from you - figuring out not just what we need to build, but also WHY. This session followed by internal workshops designed to ascertain how much design, development, testing and project management time it will take to build your app. We will also carry out investigative tech spikes to mitigate any risk or uncertainty around technical capabilities, where necessary.
Who is this aimed at?
99% of our clients go through a planning and strategy phase with us before going any further. This is because it provides a comprehensive roadmap for what to do next, and makes sure you as the client, and we as your development partner, don't miss anything. No-one like unexpected surprises or costs, and planning and strategy de-risks this considerably.
If you want to spend more time with us at this stage we can work with you to refine the app further at our day rate, or, if you need to spend a little less, we can provide a more express version to suit your budget. As with most things in life, the more time and effort spent in planning and honing your product, the better the outcome will be.
Time
Typically 2 weeks working with our team of experts, including a half-day workshop.
Investment
£2,000 - £3,500 depending on where are you at in your journey.
Output
Advice, expertise and strategic analysis from a highly experienced team, as well as a fully costed and itemised proposal including persona analysis, user journey mapping and technical blueprints.
Result
The output of planning and strategy can be a proposal which includes a full product brief, user persona analysis, technical diagrams and specifications, interface mock-ups, a fully itemised list of all features and an estimated time required for each. If you are looking at ways to fund your project (grants, investments, loans, etc), then planning and strategy is the best way for us to deliver you a robust costing for these applications.
Typical process
Initial call
Give us a call to discuss your project and where you're at. We can provide early insight into the viability of the idea based upon our extensive experience in launching startups.
Workshop
A room full of app development experts to help strategise and shape your idea with you. We ask the hard questions that no one else is asking. Typically a half day, done in person (always our preference) or virtually. We sometimes call this a 'brain dump' and gives us the info we need to provide you with our expertise.
Internal storyboarding
Now that we know all about your ambitions, we have an internal gathering where we scope out the entire user journey of your product. We discuss the various user personas who will interact with your app and work out the best UX for their specific pathway.
Technical review
With user journeys mapped out we're in a good place to start gathering information about the technical requirements of your app. This may include some investigations into integrations you may need (we've done a LOT of integrations). Technical spikes are identified and explored.
Report back on initial findings
At this stage we have a fairly good idea of what is required so we'll report back on our findings so far and our recommendations.
Prepare a proposal (optional)
Using everything we've learnt and explored so far we can write up a proposal (these are your blueprints!) that includes a full product brief, user persona analysis, technical diagrams and specifications, interface mock-ups, a fully itemised list of all features and an estimated time required for each. Our proposals are great to show to investors or use to get grant funding (our proposals have been through just about every UK funding body!).
Here are some projects to check out
We've helped launch over 100 tech startups. Here's a few we like to really shout about but there's tons more you can check out too.
HeyWow - Web App
Fanbase - Web App
Social Connections Mapping for Queen Margaret University - Web App
Have You Got - Web App
Ready to get started on your software development project or need some advice?
Speak directly with our expert team of developers. We're a friendly bunch.
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