Volano’s first interaction with a potential client is about answering questions and evaluating alignment.  The big question is obvious – “what’s this gonna cost?”  Well, good news/bad news –

Good news – we’ve built hundreds of software systems so we can give you a ‘round’ budgetary estimate in our first meeting.  Bad news – we won’t be able to give you a refined estimate until we’ve spent more time together understanding your project and your business.

Consider this – what you want to build will be one-of-a-kind.  That is to say ‘custom’… i.e. never been created before.  That is why it is hard to estimate.  That’s also why it is likely to be expensive.  Creating brand new assets takes skill, professionalism, and … calendar time.

Volano has a proven process to get the answer to this big question.  We call that process Discovery.  The outcome of discovery is a Statement of Work that will document what is to be built, how long it will take, and the estimated cost with a high-level of confidence.

Another important factor to consider is that software is never ‘done’.  There are on-going costs and your software development firm should be clear about this.  We can help you plan for the costs related to supporting your software over the long term.  Also, we offer multiple support methodologies and will can help you chose the best plan to align with your budget and expectations.