Or Why your dev partner needs Discovery too.

You know the brief—the client wants a site that “does this one thing” that no one’s really done before, or they want to integrate with a tool you’ve never heard of, or the functionality sounds cool but… how does it actually work?

At Splice, we’ve scoped hundreds of these “weird things.” And if there’s one constant, it’s this: you can’t estimate what you don’t understand. Discovery isn’t just for designers.

Not everything that’s custom is weird. But some requests throw up red flags right away:

You’d never quote a logo or brand identity without first learning about the client, their industry, and goals. Development is no different. Estimating these builds without discovery leads to:

Agencies who bring us in after the deal is signed are often the ones calling us at 10pm trying to figure out why something is suddenly impossible or double the price.

We’re not just dragging our feet. We need answers to estimate accurately:

We may ask the agency or client to reach out to their tech rep. We might need access to staging environments, sandbox credentials, or an actual human being from the client’s dev team. These are not optional, they’re essential for good scoping.

Short version: someone eats the overage. And it’s usually us or you.

We’ve had projects where we were told, “It’s just a login,” and three weeks later we’re building a multi-factor SSO integration with a legacy ERP. There’s a reason we pause and ask the weird questions early.

Here’s how to prep your client (and protect yourself):

Your dev partner will love you. Your client will thank you. And your timeline will actually stand a chance.

If you’re staring down a project with moving parts, custom logic, or mystery integrations, let’s talk early. Our technical discovery process is collaborative, efficient, and designed to get everyone aligned before the heavy lifting starts.