What if discovery reveals the project is much bigger than I expected?

That's exactly what discovery is for. Better to know the true scope at £4,500 than to discover it at £30,000 when you're halfway through a build that's gone off-track. We present the full picture with phased options so you can decide what to build now and what to defer.

What if you recommend I don't build anything?

We will, if that's the honest answer. If your problem can be solved with Airtable and Zapier for £500 a month, we'll tell you. Our job is to protect your investment, not to generate build work for ourselves.

Can I take the report to another developer?

Yes. It's yours. We explicitly encourage you to shop it around. The deliverable is designed to be portable — any competent development team can use it as a brief. Most clients don't, because by the time we've spent three weeks understanding their problem, they'd rather continue with us than start over with someone new.

Do I need to be technical?

No. Most of our clients are non-technical founders and CEOs. The report is written in plain English with a technical appendix for anyone who wants the detail. The presentation walkthrough is designed to give you confidence in the recommendation, not to drown you in jargon.

How is this different from a free consultation?

A free consultation is 30 minutes. We learn the basics and give you a ballpark. Discovery is three weeks. We learn your business, assess your technical landscape, and deliver a document you can use to make a £25,000+ investment decision with confidence. The depth is fundamentally different.

I tried building with AI tools and it broke. Can you help?

Yes — this is an increasingly common starting point for discovery clients. We assess what you've built, identify what's salvageable, and recommend whether to fix, refactor, or rebuild each component. The Code Health Scorecard gives you a clear, prioritised picture of where you stand.

Rocking Tech – Products – Platform Discovery Sprint

Know Exactly What to Build Before You Spend £25,000+

A 3-week, fixed-fee technical assessment that gives you the architecture, roadmap, and honest recommendation you need — whether that’s building with us, building with someone else, or not building at all.

From £4,500 +VAT Book a Discovery Call

3 weeks · No commitment to build

What happens when you skip proper scoping

Budget overruns and missed deadlines

You brief an agency. They write a proposal based on a 30-minute call. Three months later the project is 40% over budget, six weeks behind, and the thing they built isn’t quite what you needed.

Untouchable codebases

You spent £5,000 on Upwork, got something that sort of works, and now you’re stuck with a codebase that no serious developer wants to touch.

The most expensive mistake in platform development

This is completely avoidable. The cost of getting it wrong compounds with every week of development — and the fix is always the same: invest in understanding the problem before writing code.

The Platform Discovery Sprint

A focused, 3-week engagement where we dig into your business problem, assess the technical landscape, and deliver a written roadmap you can actually act on.

What you get

Platform Discovery Report (15–20 pages)

Business context and goals mapped from a structured intake process
Requirements prioritised using MoSCoW (must-have, should-have, could-have, won’t-have)
Technology recommendation with clear rationale
Architecture approach with a one-page diagram
Phased roadmap: 3–4 phases with timeline and budget ranges per phase
Risk assessment with specific mitigations
A build, buy, or hybrid recommendation — including “don’t build” if that’s the honest answer

Also included

Architecture diagram — one page, showing how the system fits together
Presentation walkthrough — 60 minutes, recorded, so your team or investors can review it
For existing applications: a Code Health Scorecard — automated scan plus expert review, with a fix/refactor/rebuild recommendation per component

Three weeks. Four touchpoints. One clear answer.

00

Before we start You complete a structured questionnaire — 30 to 60 minutes of your time. This extracts everything we need to hit the ground running without burning hours in meetings.

01

Week 1 — Understand 90-minute kickoff workshop. We cover your goals, constraints, users, and the problem you’re actually solving. For existing applications, we run automated analysis on your codebase. For new builds, we research the technical landscape.

02

Week 2 — Analyse Deep technical work. Architecture design or code assessment. Roadmap drafting. A 30-minute mid-point check-in to validate direction and catch misalignments early.

03

Week 3 — Deliver We finalise the report, create the architecture diagram, and walk you through everything in a 60-minute recorded presentation. You leave with a document you can act on immediately.

Total time you invest: under 4 hours across 3 weeks.

Pricing

£4,500 +VAT. Fixed fee. No surprises.

100% upfront before kickoff. The engagement is short, the scope is defined, and the deliverable is yours regardless of what you decide to do next.

Platform Discovery Sprint

3-week technical assessment

£4,500 +VAT

Book a Discovery Call

What's Included

Platform Discovery Report (15–20 pages)

Architecture diagram

60-minute recorded presentation walkthrough

MoSCoW requirements prioritisation

Phased roadmap with budget ranges

Build, buy, or hybrid recommendation

Risk assessment with mitigations

Code Health Scorecard (existing apps)

Credited in full against build cost if you proceed within 30 days

If you proceed with a Custom Platform Build within 30 days, your £4,500 is credited in full against the build cost. If you don’t, the report stands on its own — take it to any developer you like.

We’re one of the only UK agencies to publish a discovery price. Most hide behind “get in touch.” We think you deserve to know the cost before you book a call.

This is for you if

You’re about to invest £25,000+

You’re a founder or CEO about to commit serious budget to a platform build and want to know the true scope before you sign anything.

You raised funding and need a credible plan

You need a credible technical plan to present to your board or investors before releasing budget.

You tried building with AI tools or a freelancer

You tried Lovable, Bolt.new, Cursor, or a freelancer — it sort of works but you’ve hit a wall and need an expert to tell you what’s salvageable.

Your developer left

You’re sitting on a Laravel application with no documentation, no tests, and no idea what state it’s in.

You’ve been quoted wildly different prices

You need an independent assessment of what the project actually requires before choosing an agency.

This is not for you if:

You need a simple website (we offer website packages separately)

Your budget for the entire project is under £15,000

You want wireframes, user research, and a clickable prototype — those are build-phase deliverables, not discovery

If any of these apply, no hard feelings. If you’re unsure, book a call and we’ll tell you honestly.

Every agency scopes. Most just hide the cost.

When an agency gives you a “free proposal,” they’ve spent 2–4 hours on a surface-level assessment and baked that cost into the build price. You’re paying for scoping either way — the question is whether you get a thorough, independent assessment or a rough estimate designed to win the deal. Paid discovery aligns incentives. We’re not writing a proposal to win your project. We’re writing a report to give you the clearest possible picture of what you’re getting into — even if the answer is “don’t build this.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to know what you’re building?

Book a Discovery Call — 30 minutes, no commitment, no pitch.
We’ll discuss your project, confirm whether discovery is the right next step, and answer any questions.