How we scope a custom build in one conversation
Our discovery call has three questions. Most engagements never need a fourth.
What's the slowest thing you do every week? Who's the bottleneck? What would you do with the time back? That's the brief.
Discovery calls have become theater. Two hours, fifteen slides, a 40-question intake form, and at the end you both still don't know if there's a project there. We threw all of that out and replaced it with three questions.
The three questions
What's the slowest thing you do every week? Whoever answers will sigh first, then talk for ten minutes. That's the brief.
Who's the bottleneck? Sometimes it's a person. Often it's a handoff between two people, or a tool that's between them. Either way, that's where to look.
What would you do with the time back? This one separates real projects from interesting ones. If the answer is "I'd take on three more clients," we can math it. If it's "I don't know," the project isn't ready.
Why this works
The questions force the conversation to be about your business, not about software. By the end of a 30-minute call we know the slowest workflow, who owns it, and what the upside of fixing it is. That's enough to write a one-page proposal that day.
Everything else — integrations, stack, technical specifics — gets sorted in the build. It doesn't belong in discovery.
What we don't ask
We don't ask for your tech stack on the first call. We don't ask for org charts. We don't ask you to fill out a form. If we can't tell whether to build something for you in 30 minutes of talking, the answer is probably "not yet."
Sources
- [1]Internal: 41 discovery calls, scoping outcomes, 2025
Curious where automation could move the needle?
Take our 3-minute assessment. We’ll show you where Custom Softwares fit into your business.
Start assessment