The market sells "demo in 2 weeks, pilot in 3 to 6 weeks". We refuse. Here's why, and what we charge for instead.
Speed has become a marketing argument: "fast prototype", "express demo", "accelerated pilot". The promise is seductive: build fast, see fast, decide fast. We decline. Not ideological slowness: experience. Every project built on the promise of speed has cost more than one built on observation. Not on our invoice: on the client's real cost. Here's why, and what we offer instead.
What speed really costs
A rushed project has three hidden costs. Bugs unseen. Fast code gets fewer tests. Bugs that reach production will surface at your end: a Thursday night, a Sunday morning, during a sales peak. They'll cost your team time, sometimes lost orders, often client trust. Rollout incidents. A tool shipped in 3 weeks hasn't been tested by your team in real conditions. Training is rushed, edge cases get discovered in use, and your team absorbs the discovery: with irritation, sometimes with downtime. The load falling back on you. A provider who shipped fast often shipped incomplete. Adjustments happen behind your back or through endless round-trips. We've seen tools "shipped" in 3 weeks spend 6 months being "finalised": i.e. patched in production. Let's do the maths: 3 weeks advertised, 6 months of real rollout. Still fast?
What we charge for instead
Three things, in this order. Observation. One to two days on-site, to understand how you actually work before a line of code is written. This is when the brief is redone: sometimes when the project is cancelled. Priced as a package, so you don't watch the meter. Step-by-step construction. Not a sprint, not a demo. Short steps, each fixing one precise thing, tested with your team before the next. If a step doesn't hold, we redo it before moving on. Verification. We don't consider something settled until we've verified it for real. A backup never restored isn't a backup. A test never played isn't a test. Written into our doctrine, and the single thing that costs us most, and saves you most.
What it changes for you
At first glance, we look slower. At six months, we look faster: because you haven't paid twice for the same project. We'd rather be judged at six months than at the first meeting.
What we've seen on the ground
A prospect came to us after a previous provider had promised a 3-week delivery. 6 months later, the tool was still misbehaving, and he asked us to redo it. The real cost of the initial project doubled. We swore never to put a client through that promise or that hidden cost.
FAQ
What if we really are in a rush? We'll tell you. If the urgency is real (a seasonal window, for instance), we can compress. But we'll tell you out loud what we're compressing and the risk we're taking together.
How long does a typical project run? Depends on size and what we find in observation. We give a range in the quote, revised at each step if scope changes.
Another provider's deadline looks too good? Ask to see the step-by-step plan before signing. Fast to deliver isn't necessarily fast to use. Let's talk →