Six phases, roughly fourteen weeks
A predictable path from first conversation to live product.
Six phases, and what lands at the end of each.
Nothing here is a surprise on either side. You know what is coming, what you will receive, and roughly what week it arrives.
Start at phase one
Week 001Conversation
A thirty-minute call, free and unhurried. What you are trying to do, what has already been tried, what the deadline really is. If I am not the right person, I will say so and point you at someone who is.
You receive
- Written summary of the brief
- A first honest view on feasibility
- Referral if I am not the right fit
Week 1 – 202Discovery
Interviews with the people who will use the thing, a look at your analytics and support inbox, and a walk through the workflow as it exists today, spreadsheets included.
You receive
- Interview findings
- Current-state workflow map
- Prioritised problem list
- Week 2 – 303
Definition
The object model, the flows and the states, written down and argued about while changes are still free. This phase is unglamorous and it is where most of the value is created.
You receive
- Domain model and state diagrams
- Scope with explicit exclusions
- Phased estimate with assumptions
Week 3 – 604Design
Interface design at real fidelity with real content, built as a system from the first screen. You see work weekly, not at a single dramatic reveal.
You receive
- Component library
- Designs for every state
- Clickable prototype
Week 5 – 1405Build
Components before pages, deployed continuously to a preview environment. Performance and accessibility budgets run in CI, so a regression fails the build rather than the launch.
You receive
- Production application
- Preview environment per branch
- Test and budget coverage
Week 14 +06Launch & after
Staged rollout, real-user monitoring for the first fortnight, and a documented handover. Then either your team takes it forward or I stay on retainer.
You receive
- Handover documentation
- Two weeks of monitoring
- Optional ongoing retainer
Three things I need from you, and nothing else.
One named decision maker
Someone who can say yes without convening a committee. Projects with three approvers take twice as long and end up worse.
Access to the people who do the work
Six to eight conversations with actual users surfaces most of what matters. Without them I am guessing expensively.
About two hours a week
One call, a little asynchronous review. Heavier during discovery, lighter during build.
The rules underneath the process.
The phases are the shape. These are the reasons the shape works.
- 01
Say the difficult thing early
Scope problems, bad assumptions and unrealistic deadlines get raised in week one, not week nine. It is uncomfortable once and cheap forever.
- 02
Build less, finish it properly
A smaller product that is genuinely complete beats a broad one that is eighty percent done in every direction. Cut scope, never craft.
- 03
Leave it maintainable
Conventional patterns, real documentation and a handover session. Success is your team not needing to call me.
- 04
Accessibility is not a feature
Keyboard access, contrast, focus order and screen-reader semantics are acceptance criteria on every build, not a phase that gets cut.
About the process itself.
Money, ownership and post-launch questions live on the questions page.
Then discovery collapses to a few days of validation rather than two weeks. I will still insist on writing down the model and the states before building (that phase pays for itself every time), but it moves fast when the thinking is already done.
If you have a design system and specifications, yes. If you have a rough idea and an urge to see it working, no. Building without definition is how three-week projects become three-month ones.
Roughly two hours a week: one working call and a little asynchronous review. Discovery weeks are heavier, at four to six hours, because that is when I need access to the people who do the work.
You hear about it in that Friday's update, not at the end. If the overrun is mine to carry, I carry it. If scope genuinely changed, we decide together whether it is worth the extra time before any of it is spent.
Phase one is a thirty-minute call, and it costs nothing.
Tell me what you are trying to do and what the deadline really is. Within two working days you get a written summary, a rough shape, a rough number, and an honest view on whether I am the right person for it.
- info@angelmaile.com
- Phone
- +27 (0) 71 000 0000
- Studio
- Studio 04, Bree Street, Cape Town
- Hours
- Mon – Fri, 08:30 – 17:30 · SAST (UTC+2)
Replies within one business day. Cape Town, South Africa, SAST (UTC+2).