Product Development Plan
Find out what your project actually costs before you commit to building it.
Key Takeaways
What a Product Development Plan gives you
- A fixed quote in MVP and full options, not a range you cannot act on.Critical
The pack ends in a price a build can be committed to, arrived at from scope that has been written down rather than assumed, so the number holds when work starts.
- The fee is credited in full against the build if it proceeds within 90 days.Critical
If we build it, the planning costs you nothing on top. The fee exists to make the planning worth doing properly, not to be a revenue line of its own.
- The pack is yours to keep, and to hand to whoever builds it.Important
It is written so another developer can work from it. If you go elsewhere, or nowhere yet, you still hold a document that makes every later conversation shorter and cheaper.
- Free scoping is paid for anyway, inside a padded build quote.Helpful
When nobody is paid to resolve the unknowns, they get priced as risk instead. Paying for the planning separately is how you find out what something costs before committing to it.
Two facilitated workshops and a written pack: scope, architecture, an integration inventory, a delivery plan, a risk register and a fixed quote. Credited against the build, and yours to take elsewhere if you would rather.
What you get
Two facilitated workshops and a written pack. The first workshop is about what the thing has to do and for whom, with the people who will actually use it in the room. The second is about what it has to talk to and what those systems will really allow — which is where most estimates quietly go wrong.
A week later you get the pack: the scope, the architecture and data model, an inventory of every integration with its real constraints, a phased delivery plan, a risk register, and a fixed quote in MVP and full options. Then an hour walking through it, so the reasoning is understood rather than just received.
It is yours
The pack is written to be handed to whoever builds the thing. If that is us, the fee is credited in full against the first invoice. If it is someone else, or nobody yet, you keep a document that makes the next conversation with any developer a great deal shorter and a great deal cheaper.
That is the point of charging for it. Free scoping is paid for somewhere, usually in a build quote padded against the unknowns nobody had time to resolve. Paying for the planning separately is how you find out what something costs before you commit to it.
When it is the right thing to buy
It fits when you know roughly what you need but not what it will cost or how long it will take, when you have quotes that differ by a factor of three and no way to tell which is realistic, or when a build has stalled and someone needs to work out what is actually there. If you only need a number to start the conversation, the project estimator is free and takes two minutes.
Taking over a platform another team built? The second workshop runs as a current-product assessment — code, infrastructure, security posture and documentation — so the pack doubles as an honest record of what you own. From there, most platforms move onto ongoing Product Support.
What the Product Development Plan costs
A fixed-fee planning engagement producing the pack a build is quoted and run from: scope, architecture, integration inventory, delivery plan, risk register and a fixed quote in MVP and full options. Yours to keep, whoever builds it.
| Workshops | |
|---|---|
| Facilitated sessions with the people who own the process and the systems, rather than a questionnaire. | |
| Requirements workshopTwo hours on what the thing has to do and for whom, with the people who will use it in the room. | Included |
| Systems and integrations workshopTwo hours on what it has to talk to and what those systems will actually allow, which is where most estimates go wrong. | Included |
| The pack | |
| The written deliverable a build is quoted and run from, plus a session walking through it rather than emailing it over. | |
| Scope, architecture and delivery planThe documents a build team works from: what is being built, how it is structured, in what order, and what could go wrong. | Included |
| Fixed quote and playbackA fixed price in MVP and full options, presented in a one-hour session so the reasoning is understood rather than just received. | Included |
| Total Fixed Fee | $3,950 |
Payment Terms
Key Assumptions
- Priced as a single fixed-fee package: the lines above are what the engagement is made of, not a menu of separately priced components.
- Two workshops; a third for multi-stakeholder organisations is quoted separately.
- The fee is credited in full against the build if it proceeds within 90 days.
- The pack is the client's to keep and take elsewhere.