The Leverage Diagnostic · Two weeks, fixed
Somebody can feel a number moving and can’t explain it, or knows a process is leaking and can’t point at where. The diagnostic finds it in your own systems, tests the assumption the fix depends on, and prices the fix. A fortnight, £7,500 fixed, and if the answer is that you should build nothing, that’s the answer. It’s the first two stages of how I work: diagnose and decide.
What it is
All prices exclude VAT.
Two weeks to find the costly constraint, prove the risky assumption, and price the right response. It’s how I work on the projects I’m already inside, and it’s the part most businesses skip.
Two weeks is the window, not a count of billed days, and the price doesn’t move with the size of the business. A complicated business makes the narrowing harder, and the narrowing is what you’re paying for. The fortnight stays a fortnight.
What the two weeks are
Triage
Everything that’s costing you, found and ranked by what it is worth fixing.
Diagnose
Why it’s happening, established from your own systems instead of asserted.
Prove
The riskiest assumption tested, and the result written down before anybody builds on it.
Decide
What to build, in what order, and what it costs.
What “prove” means
One of two things, and which one is agreed before you commit.
Which of the two you get is decided on the first call and written into the engagement, with the artefact and the test it has to pass named before you commit. If neither can be scoped in that conversation, I’ll say so and we will not start.
A working proof
When The risk is that the thing can’t be built, or can’t be built the way everyone assumes.
You get Software that runs. The assumption it tests, the acceptance test it has to pass, the result it got, what it deliberately doesn’t do, and the source, which is yours.
A decided question
When The risk is in the diagnosis. The build is understood, but nobody knows whether it addresses the real constraint, or the domain won’t let anything be stood up in a fortnight.
You get A named experiment against your own data, the threshold agreed before it ran, the result, and the finding it settles. Including the result that stops a build.
If you already know
If you can hand me a brief I can build from, you don’t need this. Ask for a quote and it costs nothing.
Quoting is free. Working out what to quote is the diagnostic. With all four I can give you a fixed price. With something material still open I can give you a range and the assumptions it rests on, which is an honest answer and not a quote, and closing those assumptions is the work.
A brief I can quote against has four things in it
The shapes an engagement takes
two weeks, £7,500
The way in, whichever door you came through. What is wrong, what it is costing, and what fixing it takes.
quoted from a specification
The thing itself, in production and handed over. The diagnostic produces the specification, or you bring one. Six to twelve weeks is the usual shape; the specification replaces that range with a number.
£2,000 to £7,500 a month
The decisions keep coming after launch. A support retainer of two days a month, or a retainer of a day or two a week. Month to month, 30 days’ notice.
A build is priced from a specification and never from a conversation. All prices exclude VAT.
What you get
You leave with one agreed proof, and a decision you can act on.
What is costing you, ranked. The evidence under it. The proof from whichever track we agreed, which is a working proof or a decided question. And what the build takes, specified well enough that somebody else could quote it. Yours either way.
Read a worked illustration : an invented diagnostic, written out in full to show the shape of the documentQuestions
Two weeks, £7,500 fixed, and it’s how I work on the projects I’m already inside. I triage what is costing you and rank it. I establish why it’s happening, from your systems instead of from assertion. I take the riskiest assumption in the plan and test it. Then we decide what to build, in what order, and what it costs.
Two weeks is the window, not a count of billed days, and the price is fixed whatever the business turns out to look like. A complicated business makes the narrowing harder, and the narrowing is what you’re paying for. The fortnight stays a fortnight.
One of two things, and we agree which on the first call, before you commit to anything.
A working proof where the risk is that the thing can’t be built, or can’t be built the way everyone is assuming. Software that runs, the assumption it tests, the acceptance test it has to pass, the result it got, what it deliberately doesn’t do, and the source, which is yours.
A decided question where the risk is in the diagnosis instead, or the domain won’t let anything be stood up in a fortnight. A named experiment against your own data, the threshold agreed before it ran, the result, and the finding it settles. Including the result that stops a build.
What I won’t do is promise software and hand over a longer document. If neither track can be scoped on that first call, I’ll say so and we will not start.
No, and if a quote is all you need then you shouldn’t be paying for one. If you can hand me a brief I can build from, you don’t need this. Ask for a quote and it costs nothing.
That offer has conditions you can check yourself, because a free quote everybody qualifies for is either unpaid discovery or a guess. A brief I can quote against contains: what done looks like, including how fast, how available and how secure it has to be, and what is deliberately out of scope; representative data with its shape, its volumes and the awkward cases, or the interface contracts that carry the same detail; where the code lives now, what it integrates with, how it gets deployed, what has to be migrated, and any regulatory constraints; one named person who can settle an open question inside an agreed time. Quoting is free. Working out what to quote is the diagnostic. With all four I can give you a fixed price. With something material still open I can give you a range and the assumptions it rests on, which is an honest answer and not a quote, and closing those assumptions is the work. All prices exclude VAT.
The two weeks exist for the other situation, where the expensive question is what to build and not what it costs. A costing falls out of that work. It isn’t the work.
Then that’s the answer, and it’s worth more than the fee. The most expensive outcome available to you is a build that works and solves nothing.
Where it leads
The diagnostic ends with a specification and a decision. What happens next is one of these, or nothing, and nothing is a real answer.
Build
Bespoke software, SaaS products and internal systems built from the ground up and delivered to production.
Partner
A technical co-founder or fractional CTO to own the technology function: what gets built, in what order, and on what architecture.
Consult
Architecture reviews, AI strategy and technical advisory for difficult or high-value decisions.
Work with me
Tell me the number you can’t explain, or the decision you can’t size.