How to prepare for a discovery call about custom software

Why the process comes first

Software does exactly what it’s told, every time. If three people do the same job three different ways, it can’t follow all three. Someone has to pick one, and the cheapest time to pick is before anything is built.

A business that knows how its work moves gets software that fits in weeks. One that works it out during the build waits on its own decisions, and pays for the changes. The call goes further, too: instead of an hour spent finding out how you work, it’s an hour on what to build.

Write the process down, step by step

Pick the one process that costs you the most time or the most mistakes, and follow one real job through it from start to finish. Write it the way it actually happens, not the way it’s meant to. For each step, note:

• What starts it: a phone call, an email, a form, a date on the calendar.
• Who does it, by role rather than by name: the office manager, the crew lead.
• What they need in front of them to do it.
• What they decide, and the rule they decide by.
• What they produce, where it goes, and who picks it up next.
• Where it gets stuck, gets typed in twice, or goes wrong.

Settle the decisions people make in their heads

Every business runs on rules nobody wrote down. Software needs them written. Answer these before the call, or mark them as open questions so they get settled on it:

• Who can approve what, and up to what amount?
• When is a discount allowed, and who can give it?
• Who can see prices, costs and margins, and who must not?
• What happens to a rush job, a cancellation, a return or a redo?
• When something is late or missing, who has to know, and how soon?
• What can never be deleted, and how long do records have to be kept?

Name the stages

Most work moves through stages: quoted, approved, scheduled, in progress, done, invoiced, paid. Write yours, in order, using the words your people already use. For each one, write what moves a job to the next stage and who is allowed to move it. This list becomes the backbone of the software, so it’s worth an hour of argument now.

List the information, field by field

Everything the software keeps is a field: a customer’s name, a job’s date, an item’s price. Make a list for each kind of record you keep. For each field, note whether it’s required, whether it’s free text or a fixed list of choices (and write out the choices), who fills it in, and who may change it afterwards.

Most service and trade businesses start from something like this. Cross out what you don’t use, and add what’s missing:

• Customers: company name, contacts with role, phone and email, billing address, site or delivery addresses, payment terms, tax status, how they found you.
• Jobs or orders: number, customer, site, what’s being done, stage, date requested, date scheduled, date finished, who’s assigned, notes, photos and documents.
• Quotes and invoices: number, line items, quantity, unit price, discount, tax, deposit, total, due date, stage, date sent, date paid.
• Items, parts or services: name, code, unit, cost, price, supplier, quantity in stock, when to reorder.
• People who use it: their role, what they may see, and what they may change.
• Reports: each number you check every week, and exactly how it’s worked out.

Bring the real thing

A description of a spreadsheet leaves things out. The spreadsheet doesn’t. Bring a real copy of each of these, with private details blanked out if you need to:

• Every spreadsheet the process touches.
• Paper forms, checklists and job sheets.
• A quote, an invoice and a receipt exactly as the customer sees them.
• The reports you, your accountant or your bank look at.
• The emails and text messages that carry work from one person to the next.

Know the numbers and the connections

Rough numbers are enough: how many customers, how many jobs a week, how many people will use it, and how many years of old records have to move across.

List the other systems it has to work with, like QuickBooks, email, a calendar, payments or a supplier’s site. For each kind of information, say which system is the one to trust when two of them disagree.

Decide who decides, and what better looks like

Name one person with the last word on how the business works. When the office and the field disagree about a step, they settle it, so the build doesn’t stall. Name who will try the first version on real work, and how much of their week they can give it.

Then write down what success means, in terms you can check: no more typing orders in twice, invoices out the day a job is done, knowing where every job stands without a phone call.

What you can leave to the call

You don’t need screen designs, a technical plan or a finished specification. That’s our job. Where you aren’t sure how a step should work, write the question down and bring it. A list of honest open questions is more useful than a confident guess.