Free Workbook · Custom Software & AI Systems
Scope Custom Software Before You Build It
A free, plain-English workbook that turns “we need software” into a brief a developer can actually quote — built from the same structured discovery we run with paying clients, around the questions that quietly decide whether a project ships or stalls.
Instant download. No sales call unless you ask for one.
Why most software projects go wrong before a line of code is written
It’s rarely the code that fails. It’s the scope.
Owners brief a developer with a list of screens and features, get three quotes that look nothing alike, pick one, and discover four months in that the requirements that actually mattered were never written down. The exception nobody mentioned. The manager who has to approve before payroll runs. The report the plant head needs but never asked for out loud.
Good software begins there — with the roles, exceptions, data and approvals a feature list always misses. This workbook is how you surface them first.
What’s inside
The workbook walks you through twelve areas we cover in every serious build — the same structure we use in paid discovery, distilled so you can work through it yourself. Each one takes a few minutes and catches something a feature list won’t:
- Business outcome the result the software must produce, and how you’ll know it worked.
- Users and roles everyone who touches it, and what each person may see or do.
- Current process how the work actually flows today, step by real step.
- Exceptions the “except when…”, the edge cases, the informal workarounds.
- Data what information you hold, where it lives, and who owns it.
- Approvals who signs off, in what order, and what happens when they don’t.
- Reports the numbers people need out, and who reads them.
- Integrations the tools it must talk to.
- Security and access who must never see what.
- Migration the legacy data and systems it will replace.
- Acceptance how you’ll decide it’s finished and correct.
- Support what happens after go-live, and who owns it then.
Fill it in and you’ll hold something most projects never start with: a brief a competent developer can quote against without guessing.
Is this just a lead magnet?
No. It’s the discovery structure we run with paying clients, distilled to the parts that catch most projects out. On a full engagement that discovery can run to as many as 235 structured questions — this free version won’t reproduce all of it, and doesn’t pretend to. It will still get you a great deal further than any feature list.
We built it from real work. On a multi-section production system we delivered for a manufacturer, the requirements that mattered most — roles, approvals, exceptions — only surfaced deep into the build. The workbook exists so you find them at the start, not the middle. It’s the same discovery we bring to every engagement, and some of those client relationships have now run for more than two years.
Get the Custom Software Requirements Workbook
You’ll get the workbook the moment you submit. Your details stay private and are never sold.
Already know what you need built?
Skip the workbook and talk it through with a co-founder. A short 20-minute call is enough to tell you where the real complexity — and the real cost — is hiding.
We usually respond within one hour.