Do you need to know whether the system you were quoted is the right one?
Review of architecture, cost, scope and vendor proposals before the money is committed. Independent, specific, and written down.
The problem
A proposal arrives with a confident architecture diagram, a price, and a timeline, and the people who have to approve it cannot tell whether it is right. The vendor is not lying, but they are answering the question they know how to answer. Common results are a system three times larger than the problem, a licence model that gets expensive exactly when the business grows, or a design that quietly assumes the hard part will be handled later.
How we approach it
We read the proposal against the problem it is meant to solve, not against best practice in the abstract. We check the numbers: users, data, throughput, cost over five years. We check the assumptions that were not written down. Where something is wrong we say what and why, and what to ask for instead. Where the proposal is good we say that too. The value is in a clear answer, not in finding fault. When there is no proposal yet, we do the same work one step earlier: we analyse what has to be built and write the scope the contract will rest on.
Worked example
A contract written before the first line of code
A public directorate wanted the application that manages its day-to-day work built by an advertising agency we advise. Software was not the agency's trade, so before anyone signed, the question of what exactly was being bought and sold came to us. We analysed the whole job: every module the directorate would need, the roles and approvals inside it, the data it had to hold, where it would run, and what would have to be supported after launch. Then we turned that analysis into the contract itself: what is delivered and how it is accepted, what is out of scope, and who is responsible for what once the system is live. The result was a document both sides could hold each other to. The agency knew what it was committing to, and the directorate knew what it was paying for.
What you get
- A written review of the proposal against your actual problem and numbers, or a written scope where no proposal exists yet
- A list of specific risks, gaps, and unpriced assumptions
- Concrete questions and changes to take back to the vendor
- A recommendation you can act on, including when it is to proceed as quoted