1. Discover
Before we propose a solution, we need to understand the situation: what's forcing the change, where the friction is and what we're figuring out together.
The Prime Process: Diagnose Before We Design
Every engagement starts with the Prime Process, our way of understanding your business, your systems and what's at stake before we recommend anything.
Why We Diagnose First
Most engagements that go wrong skip the diagnosis. A solution arrives first, the team inherits something it didn't choose, and the real problem stays put. That costs twice: you pay for the solution, and you keep paying for the problem it didn't solve. The Prime Process puts diagnosis first, so every recommendation traces back to something we found in your environment.
It shapes every engagement we run, from the first conversation to the handover.
The Four Stages
2. Diagnose
We trace the actual workflow and audit the actual environment. You get a documented finding in your own language, including what staying put costs.
3. Design
We design the solution together, because the people who will run it need to own it. We bring patterns from past work. Your team owns the design.
4. Deliver
We do the work, measure it against the original diagnosis and transfer knowledge, so your team ends up stronger, not dependent on us.
What You Get at Each Stage
- Discover: a shared, written statement of what we are trying to figure out, and why now.
- Diagnose: a documented finding that names the real problem and the cost of the status quo, in money, engineering time and risk, using your figures where you have them.
- Design: a plan your team helped build, with owners, sequence and scope agreed up front.
- Deliver: the work done and checked against the diagnosis, with runbooks your team owns.
How It Starts: The Free Discovery Call
The Free Discovery Call is the Discover stage in practice. Tell us what's going on. We'll talk it through and tell you honestly whether there's a problem worth solving and whether we're the right fit.
The Diagnostic
The diagnostic is the Diagnose stage of our process, run as its own paid piece of work. It is for confirming the real problem and putting a number on it before anyone designs a fix.
What we look at: your actual environment, team and spend. We trace the workflow behind the issue, review the systems, access and costs involved, and talk with the people who run them.
How it runs: We start from the recap of your discovery call. We agree the question and scope with you first, work from your environment and your own figures, and check what we find with your team as we go.
What you get: a documented finding that names the real problem and what the status quo costs in money, engineering time and risk, using your own figures, plus a recommended order of work.
What happens after: the finding is yours. Take it and run with it, or move to Design with us. Sometimes the finding is that the fix is smaller than you expected, or not worth doing yet. You'll hear that too. Nothing gets designed until the problem is named and sized.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Prime Process only for large projects?
No. A short engagement still runs through all four stages. Only the size of the work inside each stage changes.
What if we already know what we need?
Then the diagnosis is narrower: it confirms the plan or flags a related issue worth fixing in the same window. We won't invent work you don't need.
Does every STS service use it?
Every consulting engagement starts with Discover and Diagnose before we design anything. A Free Discovery Call covers Discover, and The Diagnostic covers Diagnose when a closer look is needed.
Start with a Discovery Call
Not sure yet? See the signs it's time for a technology partner