It’s quite common for people who meet with us for a consultation hope that the meeting will conclude with a rough estimate for development. The truth is, rough estimates after just hearing an idea are grossly inaccurate and often intentionally high (or low, if someone’s being dishonest). To get an accurate quote for development, a team needs to get involved and research needs to be done.

Everyone plans… But not in the same way

Every development firm goes through a discovery process to meet with a variety of team members and come up with a plan of attack. It’s essential to figuring out how the app is going to work and how it needs to be built. The majority of firms quote a development price range that’s high enough to cover their discovery process. The danger of this is that the client is then agreeing to move forward with the project without actually knowing how much the final bill will be. Due to unknown speed bumps along the way, the final price could easily increase by $20,000 or $50,000 or more when the project is quoted prior to the discovery process. All it takes is for one element of the app to encounter an unseen complication and the entire budget has to be recalculated. We’ve seen gut-instinct quotes end up being drastically wrong simply because one feature required a different methodology than expected.

No one likes surprises

We work with many small to mid-sized businesses as well as entrepreneurs, and we know that a surprise bill for an extra $20,000 is enough to completely derail an app project for most of them. In this situation, the innovator either abandons the project or tries to bring it to market with incomplete features to save money. No one is happy when that happens. The developers’ time has been wasted on an incomplete project, and the person behind the idea has poured a substantial amount of money into a project that isn’t worth showing anyone. That’s why it’s important to know an exact price before committing to begin development.

Plan first, build later

As a result, we make our discovery process very transparent. We call it New Product Discovery. Through this process, our clients get a solid plan for launching their business, developing an app, and a very narrow estimate for which they can budget accordingly. For anyone who is serious about their idea, the cost of this consulting is immensely valuable because it actually produces technical specifications that can be used immediately or later. It’s also far less risky to pay a few thousand dollars instead of $50,000 to find out the budget won’t stretch far enough.

Are you ready to move forward with your app idea? We would love to hear how we can help you. Contact us today.