Paid discovery (phase 0, inception)
A short, separately priced project before the build: workshops, a technical feasibility check and a scoped plan with a quote you can take to any vendor.
Software houses sell it under names like discovery workshop, inception, phase 0, tech feasibility workshop or, for AI, a discovery and strategy workshop. The output should be documents you own: the problem and users, the riskiest technical questions answered, an architecture sketch, a backlog and an estimate with its uncertainty. It narrows the cone of uncertainty before anyone commits to a fixed price.
Related terms
- Discovery call (disco): The first real sales conversation, which salespeople call a disco: the vendor learns your problem, its cost and who decides, before any demo or quote.
- Fixed price: A contract where scope and price are agreed up front and the vendor carries the risk.
- Cone of uncertainty: How wide an honest estimate is at each stage: from 0.25× to 4× at the idea stage, narrowing as decisions are made.
- Scope creep: Small additions that each seem reasonable and together blow the budget and the date.
- Proof of concept vs pilot (PoC, POV): A proof of concept shows something can work on sample data; a pilot runs it for real users on real data; a proof of value measures whether it pays.
