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Needmug

From the first call to a product people use.

Five stages, whether the work takes six weeks or a year. The shape is the same every time, so you always know what is happening now and what you will be asked to decide next.

The five stages.

What happens inside each one, and what is in your hands when it ends.

Discovery

We work out what you need, what already exists, and what an auditor or a regulator will ask for. Sometimes a single call. More often a week or two.

  • Time with the people who use the system every day, and with the ones who own it
  • A written view of what runs today, what it connects to, and where it leaks
  • Risks named while they are still cheap to design around

Scope and estimate

A written scope with the risky parts marked as risky, a timeline, and a fixed price. Agencies avoid fixed prices because scope moves. We would rather do the work of pinning it down than send you an invoice you could not have predicted.

  • A build split into phases you can stop between
  • One fixed proposal, so there is no hourly meter running
  • What falls outside the scope written down as plainly as what falls inside it

Design

Wireframes first, then interface design, tested with people who match your users before anyone writes production code.

  • Flows and wireframes agreed before any visual work starts
  • Accessibility checked at design time rather than retrofitted after launch
  • A component library your own developers can keep building against

Build and review

Two-week cycles. At the end of each one there is working software on a real environment, not a status update.

  • Something you can click at the end of every cycle
  • Code review, automated checks and a staging environment from the first week
  • Changes priced as they come up, so none of them arrives as a surprise invoice

Launch and support

Release, monitoring, and the support that comes after. The number you call at three in the morning reaches the person who wrote the thing.

  • A release plan with a way back, agreed before the date
  • Monitoring and alerting handed over along with the code
  • A support arrangement sized to what an hour of downtime actually costs you

Start at stage one.

Discovery is where we find out whether the project you have described is the project you need. Tell us what you are trying to build and we will take it from there.