Discovery and Prototype Sprint

What does the discovery sprint produce?

Most app projects go wrong before a line of code is written. The brief is a conversation, the quote is a guess, and the first argument arrives when the invoice and the expectation disagree. The sprint replaces the guess with four things you can hold: written requirements, a system architecture, a clickable prototype and a fixed-price quote for the build.

The requirements name every user role, every workflow and the acceptance criteria that decide when a feature is done. The architecture names the data model, the hosting and every third-party service the app depends on, with the usage costs those services bill after launch. The prototype is a set of clickable screens, not a slide deck, so you can put it in front of the people who will use the app and watch where they hesitate. The quote is fixed and itemised.

Why is the sprint a paid gate?

An app price set before anyone has seen the requirements is a package sale, not a plan. We hold the same position across every service line: the SEO and AI readiness audit comes before any SEO retainer, integration discovery and scoping comes before any integration build, and this sprint comes before any app build.

Paying for the sprint does two things. It qualifies whether the project is real, which protects you from spending a build budget on something a prototype would have killed in week one. And it gives you a clean exit: if the build does not suit, or the quote is more than the problem is worth, you leave with the artefacts and no further obligation.

What happens in the two to three weeks?

Requirements and constraints

The first sessions establish who uses the app, what they need to do, and what already exists. We map the current process, including the spreadsheets and email threads the app is meant to replace, and write the requirements as roles and workflows with acceptance criteria.

This is also where the cost inflators come out. A business turning over more than $3 million a year, or one handling health information, has obligations under the Privacy Act 1988: a compliant privacy policy, data handling disclosures and reasonable security steps. Privacy and compliance work adds 10–40% to a build depending on the data type, and the sprint names that figure rather than letting it surface as a variation later.

Architecture and prototype

With the requirements agreed, we design the data model and the system boundaries, choose the hosting and identify every external API the app calls. Each API is recorded with its authentication method, its rate limits and what it bills after launch. A quiet app might cost around $50 a month in third-party usage; a growing app can run to four figures monthly, and you should know which one you are building before you build it.

The prototype is built in parallel. It covers the core screens and the main workflow end to end, clickable enough to test with real users. Feedback from those sessions goes back into the requirements before the quote is written.

The quote

The sprint ends with a fixed-price quote for one of three named builds. It itemises the work, names every third-party platform and API fee and who pays it, and includes the maintenance plan as a line item priced from 15% of the build cost per year. Test automation and release assurance are inside the build price on every quote we write, never an optional line.

Which build does the sprint lead to?

The sprint quotes one of three builds, and part of its job is to tell you which.

• A web app or client portal from $12,000 + GST is the core offering: a logged-in area for customers or staff, secured properly, with no app store between you and your users.
• An internal tool or dashboard from $8,000 + GST fits when the users are your own team and the stakes are lower.
• An iOS and Android app from $18,000 + GST fits when the app must live on a phone: the camera, offline use or notifications as the core experience.

Anything larger or more complex than those three is referred to a partner, and the sprint tells you that in week one rather than after a build has started.

What is credited and what is not?

The sprint fee is credited against the build if it proceeds with us within 30 days of the sprint ending. That is the same rule as integration scoping and different from the audit, which is a complete deliverable and is not credited. Third-party fees identified during the sprint are never absorbed into the build price; they are named in the quote and who pays them is settled in writing before work starts.

Whatever you decide, you own every sprint artefact: the requirements, the architecture, the prototype files and the quote. There is no lock-in on the build that follows, and when a build proceeds, you own the code and the test suite that ships with it.