how-i-work › the specification engagement
Scope before price, in full
A fixed build price is only honest if what's being built is already written down. This is the piece of work that writes it down — what it produces, how it starts from whatever you already have, what it costs, and what it deliberately leaves out.
what you get
One document, five parts, yours to keep
The output is a specification your next vendor could build from without ever speaking to me. Every part of it is decided by me and written up in plain language, with diagrams where they help.
how it starts
From whatever you already have
The more you bring, the less of the engagement is spent working out what you want and the more is spent designing it. Three starting points, in order of preference.
You have a detailed specification
Requirements, user flows, the systems it has to talk to, the constraints you're under. I read it, send back a short list of gaps and questions, and go straight to the technical work. This is the fastest and cheapest path.
You have a partial one
Something exists but it wouldn't survive a hard question. I tell you how many working sessions it will take to finish it, and those sessions are billed at USD 120 an hour on top of the fixed fee. Thin or contradictory documentation costs you directly, which is the point: it's cheaper to bring detail than to pay me to extract it.
You have nothing written down
Send me the problem in a paragraph anyway. Whether I take it on depends on the size of it — some things are worth building the specification from scratch and some aren't, and you'll get a straight answer either way rather than an open-ended discovery bill.
what it costs
A fixed fee, set by the size of the system
fixed fee
fixed fee
a partial spec
if you build with me
One system with clear edges.
A single service or application, one data store, a handful of integrations. The kind of thing one person builds in weeks, not months.
Several moving parts, or an existing one to untangle.
Multiple services, multiple integrations, more than one team touching it, or a legacy system whose behaviour has to be mapped before anything can be designed around it.
Which bracket you're in is agreed at intake, before any work starts — if your partial specification turns out to describe something bigger than it looked, you hear that up front, not on the invoice. The fee is payable on commencement.
If you go on to build with me, half the specification fee comes off the build price. If you don't, the document is still yours, and the fee is the whole of what you've spent.
Priced in USD. Invoiced in ZAR, USD, GBP or EUR, agreed up front.
what's not included
Stated now, so it isn't a surprise later
Building it.
The specification is the input to a build quote — fixed price, fixed date — not the start of one. The build is scoped, priced and contracted separately, off the signed document.
Screens and user-interface design.
Wireframes, visual design and copy are not in scope. If the system has a front end, the specification defines what it talks to and how — not what it looks like.
Choosing your vendors for you.
The document is enough for any competent engineer or agency to quote against. Running that selection, or sitting in on it, is separate advisory work and priced as such if you want it.
Ongoing advice after sign-off.
Once the document is signed off and walked through, the engagement is done. Questions from a vendor working from it, or changes to the specification itself, are billed at the hourly rate.
get in touch
Send me what you have
A specification, a partial one, or a paragraph in plain language — whatever you've got. Within a week you'll hear which starting point you're at, which bracket the system falls into, and whether it's a job I'll take.