CoderConda · Insights
Every digital build throws up the same questions. All of them get answered, whether you plan for it or not. The only thing you choose is when, and that decides the currency: beforehand an answer costs 11 minutes of reading, mid-build it costs a change request.
Reading time
Reading time. Nothing else.
Four moments01Before02In the quote03In the build04In operation
The scale is not a measurement. Only the first price is counted.
6 questions·11 minutes
02 — The moments
Before the first commission, every question can be answered wrongly for free. You can change the order, cut the scope or drop the project, and it has cost nobody anything. This is the only one of the four moments whose price can be counted.
Wrong for free while nothing is running.
Wherever a question stays open in a quote, somebody makes an assumption and it gets priced in. That is why a range says more than a fixed figure while the question is open: it names what moves the number. A fixed price on unclear scope is either padded or renegotiated later.
A range names what moves the price.
During the build an open question is no longer a question, it is a work order. It costs not only the work it triggers but the date sitting behind it. Which is exactly why technology and scope belong in the quote rather than in week three.
The work is not the cost, the date is.
Once the system runs, there is data in it. What was laid out wrongly is no longer changed at this point, it is rebuilt and migrated. This is the most expensive of the four moments, and the only one nobody plans for in advance.
Data makes every correction dearer.
Four moments, one question. Only the first has a figure.
03 — The call
The guides answer the general half of every question. The other half is your figures, your market and whatever already runs at your company, and that is in no text. Having read is therefore not the same as having decided.
The difference is not what you know. It is where the call starts.
04 — Nothing asked
The guides are the part of this site that asks for nothing. No form in front, no sign-up, no newsletter afterwards. What follows holds for all of them and does not change when another one is added.
Another guide changes nothing on this list.
05 — The guides
The order here is the project’s, not the publication’s. The newest guide therefore does not sit at the top but where its question comes up.
How do you build a company digitally?2 min
A practical sequence from audience and offer to website, sales and software.
Company building · Positioning · Website · Custom software
What does a digital build cost?2 min
What the price actually depends on, and why a range says more than a fixed number when the scope is unclear.
Budget · Offer · Website · Positioning
Why website and content belong together2 min
How content builds trust and the website turns it into inquiries.
Website · Content · Positioning · Sales
Which technology carries a growing company?2 min
Why maintainability decides the choice and operations are not a later step.
Operations · Scaling · Automation · Custom software
When is a customer portal worthwhile?2 min
Criteria, scope and a sensible starting point for portals and dashboards.
Customer portal · Custom software · MVP · Operations · Budget
When does automation pay off?1 min
The criteria for when a workflow deserves a machine, and when it does not yet.
Automation · Operations · Data · Custom software
The subjects
6 subjects that at least two guides have in common.
And the rest
Then it is probably one of the specific ones, and I would rather answer that in a call than in a text that has to hold for everybody. Fifteen minutes usually covers it.
06 — The objections
01/04
“This is not a library.”
Short
True, and it is not meant to become one. The register covers the part that comes up in every project. Everything specific is in no text, it is in the call.
“Every agency writes this.”
Short
A good deal of it, yes. The difference is at the end of each guide: the questions that come next, with my answer to each.
“I have no time to read.”
Short
Then read one. All of them together are 11 minutes, and you only need the one for the moment you are in. The register tells you which that is.
“I do not want insight, I want a quote.”
Short
You can have one, and sooner if one question is settled first. A quote on unclear scope is either padded or renegotiated, and both cost you more.
In full
01“This is not a library.”
An archive would be the wrong promise. Publish twenty posts and you then have twenty posts to maintain, half of which are out of date within a year. This register is tied to the four moments, and there are no more moments than that. If it grows, it grows because a question turned out to come up in every project, not because a calendar demanded a post. What is missing for your case is missing from any text anyway: it would have to hold for everybody and would be exactly right for nobody.
02“Every agency writes this.”
The suspicion is fair, because most text of this kind is made out of other text of this kind. There are two places to check it. The first is the ending: every guide closes with questions that were actually asked, and the answer I give to them, including where that is inconvenient. The second is the price. Where a text here states a range instead of a figure, what moves the range is stated beside it. A post that does neither really is interchangeable, and then the objection stops being an objection and becomes a finding.
03“I have no time to read.”
This is the most honest of the four, and it is usually true. That is why the corpus is as short as it is, and why the reading time stands on every row: you should know what you are getting into before you click. Somebody genuinely out of time reads none of them and books the call instead. That is not a worse route, it is the more direct one, and it costs fifteen minutes rather than the reading. The only difference is that the first few of those minutes then go on what is written here anyway.
04“I do not want insight, I want a quote.”
You get a quote after the first call, in writing, with scope and price. This register does not stand in front of that, it stands beside it. The reason is commercial rather than educational: whatever is undecided in a quote gets assumed, and every assumption gets a figure. Anybody who knows in advance which decisions are pending strikes half of them out in the call, and the figure comes down with them. Anybody who would rather read nothing books directly. There is a quote with fixed scope at the end of that too.
If a fifth sentence occurs to you, bring it to the call.
07 — Appointment
Pick a time that suits you straight from the calendar. I go through with you where your company stands and what is worth doing. No obligation and no sales pressure.
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