Five phases.
Zero surprises.

We've refined this process across dozens of SaaS projects. Every phase has a clear purpose, defined deliverables, and a measurable exit criterion — so you always know where you are and what comes next.

1

Discover

The Discover phase is where we establish shared understanding. We don't assume anything. Instead, we ask the questions that expose hidden assumptions, surface contradictory requirements, and reveal the one or two insights that should drive every product decision that follows.

A typical Discover engagement runs 5–10 business days and involves at minimum a two-hour kick-off workshop with your core team, plus async research we run independently on your target market and competitive landscape.

What we do

  • Kick-off workshop (problem definition, user stories)
  • Stakeholder interviews
  • Competitive analysis
  • Technical feasibility assessment
  • Risk identification

You're involved in

  • Kick-off workshop (2h)
  • Reviewing competitive analysis
  • Approving final scope document
  • ~3–4 hours total
Phase deliverables
Project charter document
Competitive landscape report
ICP and user persona definitions
Prioritized feature list (MVP + backlog)
Technical architecture recommendation
Risk register
Signed project statement of work
Duration
1–2 weeks
Your time
~3–4 hours
Phase deliverables
User journey maps
Low-fi wireframes (all screens)
Approved Figma prototype
Design system (components + tokens)
Mobile-responsive layouts
Dev handoff specs (spacing, states, interactions)
Duration
2–3 weeks
Your time
4–6 hours
2

Design

Design happens before engineering starts — and this discipline is non-negotiable. Building without a finalized design specification is how projects drift, miss deadlines, and accumulate expensive rework.

The Design phase runs roughly parallel with the initial environment setup. By the time your engineers start writing feature code, every screen has been approved and every edge case has been considered in Figma — not discovered mid-sprint.

We present designs in two rounds: low-fidelity wireframes first (fast feedback, cheap to change), then high-fidelity. You'll have a working prototype you can click through before we write a single component.

Design review process

1
Wireframe review — async feedback via Figma comments
2
Hi-fi designs — 60-minute walkthrough call with Q&A
3
Revisions incorporated — one round of revisions included
Design freeze — approved designs locked for Build phase
3

Build

This is where ideas become software. The Build phase is structured in two-week sprints, each with a Monday kick-off, daily async standup, and a Friday demo that you (and anyone else on your team) are invited to attend.

You have read access to the repository from day one. Every PR links back to a user story. Every merge triggers automated tests. No dark rooms, no status-update theater.

Sprint structure

Mon
Sprint kick-off — user stories confirmed, blockers cleared, environment healthy
Daily
Async standup in Slack — what shipped, what's in progress, any blockers
Wed
Mid-sprint check-in (15 min) — scope alignment, early feedback on in-progress work
Fri
Sprint demo — live working software, your questions, next sprint planning

Quality gates on every PR

Automated lint + type check
Unit test suite passes
Integration tests against staging DB
Peer code review
Visual regression check (Storybook)
Security scan (Snyk/Dependabot)
Phase deliverables
Fully functional application in your GitHub repo
Automated test suite (>70% coverage)
CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions)
API documentation (auto-generated)
Architecture Decision Records
Staging environment for UAT
Duration
4–8 weeks
Your time
2–3 h/week
Phase deliverables
Production environment (IaC in your account)
Zero-downtime deployment pipeline
Monitoring dashboards + alerting
Runbook (incident response guide)
DNS, SSL, and security configuration
Recorded architecture walkthrough
Duration
1–2 weeks
Your time
~2 hours
4

Deploy

Deployment is where many projects stumble. Infrastructure isn't provisioned until the last minute, secrets are handled ad-hoc, and monitoring is an afterthought. Not here.

We provision and harden your production environment in parallel with the final Build sprints, so there's no last-minute scramble. By launch day, the environment has already been running with synthetic traffic for at least a week, every alert has fired at least once, and the team knows exactly how to respond.

Launch day checklist

  • DNS cutover verified
  • SSL A+ grade (SSL Labs)
  • Payment flows end-to-end tested
  • Error rates <0.1% for 24h
  • Backup restoration tested
  • On-call rotation confirmed

What you own after Deploy

  • Cloud account (your card)
  • All secrets and credentials
  • Terraform state and configs
  • Domain and DNS
  • GitHub org / repo admin
5

Grow

After launch, the learning begins in earnest. Real users reveal real friction points. Usage patterns expose architectural assumptions that need revisiting. Revenue data shows which features actually matter.

In the Grow phase, we shift from project mode to product mode. We analyze your analytics, run targeted user interviews, iterate on UX friction points, and execute your feature roadmap in a continuous sprint cycle. This phase has no natural end date — it continues for as long as you need a senior engineering partner.

Monthly
Strategy & product review call
Bi-weekly
Sprint delivery cycle
Quarterly
Architecture review & security audit
Grow phase focus areas
User retention and activation analysis
Conversion funnel optimization
Feature roadmap execution
Infrastructure scaling (horizontal + vertical)
A/B testing and growth experiments
Technical debt and refactoring planning
Structure
Monthly retainer

See Pricing for retainer tiers

Want to walk through this for your specific project?

Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll map your idea to this process — with honest timeline and budget estimates.

Book a discovery call