Our process ยท 2026
How we work. Five phases, real timelines, real artifacts.
Every agency has a process page. Most are generic - "Discovery, Design, Build, Launch". This one names what we actually deliver at each phase, how long it takes, how much of your time it costs, and when we tell clients to skip a phase.
The short version
A typical engagement runs 4-6 months: 2 weeks of discovery, 3 weeks of design, 10-14 weeks of build, 3 weeks of launch support. Then either 3-6 months on retainer for iteration, or a clean handoff to your internal engineering team. We expect about 6-12 hours per week of your time during the active phases.
Discovery
We walk through your concept, current evidence, and constraints. Lock the scope before any design or code.
What you receive
- Validated problem statement and target user
- Scoped MVP brief (in scope, out of scope, deferred)
- Technical architecture sketch
- Fixed-price quote OR T&M ranges with weekly cap
- Risks and assumptions document
Your time and cadence
- Your time commitment
- About 6-10 hours over 2 weeks
- Working sessions
- 3-4 working sessions (90 min each)
- When we change or skip this phase
- If you have no validated demand or no real customer evidence, we will tell you to spend on customer discovery first. We have walked away from engagements at this step.
Design
UX research, UI design, prototyping. We design the operator surface alongside the customer surface, not after.
What you receive
- Information architecture and key user flows
- High-fidelity Figma designs for all primary screens
- Design system foundation (typography, color, components)
- Clickable prototype for customer-discovery interviews
- Accessibility scope (WCAG 2.2 AA baseline)
Your time and cadence
- Your time commitment
- About 8-12 hours over 3 weeks
- Working sessions
- Weekly design reviews (60-90 min each)
- When we change or skip this phase
- For specific narrow projects (a feature addition, a single integration), we sometimes skip formal design and jump to build. Always our call after discovery, not yours to ask for.
MVP build
Senior-only engineering through to production launch. Weekly written progress reports. Demo every Friday.
What you receive
- Production codebase deployed to your infrastructure
- Automated test coverage on critical paths
- Internal documentation (architecture, runbooks, deploy guides)
- Operator/admin dashboard if scoped
- Analytics instrumentation and dashboard
- Pre-launch QA report and go-live checklist
Your time and cadence
- Your time commitment
- About 4-6 hours per week
- Working sessions
- Weekly status reviews (60 min) + Friday demos (30 min)
- When we change or skip this phase
- If discovery revealed scope is genuinely fluid and the foundation is not yet settled, we will recommend a 2-3 week paid prototype phase before committing to the full MVP scope.
Launch support
We are present when your first users hit the product. Bug response, analytics review, traffic-pattern learnings.
What you receive
- 24-hour bug response SLA during launch window
- First-week analytics review with insights
- Performance and reliability monitoring setup
- Customer-support ticket triage assistance if needed
- Post-launch retrospective and v2 recommendations
Your time and cadence
- Your time commitment
- About 3-5 hours per week
- Working sessions
- Daily standups during launch week, then weekly
- When we change or skip this phase
- For projects with an existing internal team taking over at launch, this phase reduces to a 1-week hand-off period.
Iteration
Either we continue on retainer for feature work + small fixes, or we hand off cleanly to your internal engineering team.
What you receive
- Feature backlog prioritized by post-launch data
- Monthly written status reports
- A/B testing framework if scoped
- Internal team knowledge-transfer sessions if handing off
- Open-source repo of internal tooling we built (if any)
Your time and cadence
- Your time commitment
- Varies by retainer structure
- Working sessions
- Bi-weekly check-ins for retainer; daily for handoff weeks
- When we change or skip this phase
- About 30 percent of our engagements end at launch with a clean handoff; about 60 percent continue 3-6 months on retainer; about 10 percent become longer-term partnerships.
What we do NOT do
For clarity, things you should expect from a process page that we explicitly avoid:
No fake fixed timeline guarantees
The ranges above are honest. A "guaranteed 6-week MVP" is a sales line; real scope decides real timeline.
No mystery scope changes
If reality forces a scope change mid-engagement, we tell you in the next status review, not at the end. Change orders happen, but they are visible early.
No junior pass-through
Every engineer on your engagement has shipped at least three production products. The senior architect on the sales call is on the work, not just the contract.
No "we built it, now you maintain it" with no docs
Internal documentation (architecture, runbooks, deploy guides) is a deliverable, not a hope. We have inherited too many undocumented codebases to ship one ourselves.
No taking work we should not take
If discovery reveals you do not yet have validated demand, or that off-the-shelf solves 80 percent of your workflow, we tell you. Three engagements walked away at the discovery step in 2025; same in 2026 so far.
What a typical engagement timeline looks like
A standard SaaS MVP engagement from kickoff to retainer transition. Your project will vary based on complexity, regulatory needs, and scope.
- Week 1
Kickoff. Discovery sessions begin.
- Week 2
Discovery wraps. Scoped brief and quote delivered.
- Week 3
Design phase begins. First IA review.
- Week 5
Design phase wraps. High-fidelity Figma + prototype delivered.
- Week 6
Build phase begins. First demo Friday of Week 6.
- Week 16-18
Build phase wraps. Production deployed.
- Week 19
Launch support begins. First users hit the product.
- Week 22
Launch support wraps. Iteration phase begins on retainer OR clean handoff.
- Month 6+
Retainer iteration OR internal team owns the product.
Related pages
Ready to start a discovery call?
No sales pitch. 30-45 minutes on your concept, current evidence, and constraints. You leave with a scoped path forward whether or not you engage us.
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