Product Discovery & Planning
Turn a rough idea into a costed, prioritised delivery plan — with the risky assumptions tested before you commit budget.
Learn more about Product Discovery & Planning
UK software consultancy
We plan, design and deploy software that works
PlanWise is a software consultancy for organisations that need a product built properly. We scope the problem before we quote, design it with your users, build it with senior engineers and hand it over running in your own cloud.
Fixed-scope discovery
Senior-only teams
You own the code
What we do
Consultancy that covers the whole lifecycle
Engage us for a single phase or the full journey — from the first discovery workshop through to a product running in production with your team supporting it.
Custom Software Development
Web platforms, internal tools and customer portals built by small senior teams, shipped in two-week increments you can review.
Learn more about Custom Software DevelopmentUI/UX Design
Research-led interface design and a component library your developers can build from without guesswork.
Learn more about UI/UX DesignCloud & DevOps
Infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines and monitoring — so deploying to production stops being an event.
Learn more about Cloud & DevOpsApplication Modernisation
Move legacy systems off ageing platforms incrementally, without a risky big-bang rewrite or a feature freeze.
Learn more about Application ModernisationQuality Engineering & Support
Automated test coverage, performance testing and an ongoing support agreement with response times in writing.
Learn more about Quality Engineering & Support
How we work
Plan. Design. Build. Deploy.
Four stages, each with a defined output you can review before the next one starts. No stage begins until you have signed off the one before it.
Plan
We start with discovery workshops to pin down the problem, the users and the commercial goal — then turn that into a scoped, costed roadmap you can actually budget against.
Design
Wireframes, clickable prototypes and a design system your team can grow with. You see and test the product before a line of production code is written.
Build
Small senior teams working in two-week sprints, with automated tests and code review on every change. You get a working increment you can review each fortnight.
Deploy
Cloud infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines and monitoring from day one — so releases are routine, reversible and boring in the best possible way.
12+
Years building software
80+
Products planned & shipped
30+
Engineers, designers & testers
98%
Client retention rate
Why PlanWise
A consultancy that behaves like your own team
We work the way a good in-house team works — close to the problem, honest about trade-offs, and accountable for what happens after launch.
Senior-only teams
No layers of juniors billed at senior rates. The people in your kick-off are the people writing your code.
Fixed scope, clear pricing
A costed plan before we start, and a written change process if the scope moves. No open-ended invoices.
Secure by default
GDPR-aware data handling, dependency scanning and secrets management built into the pipeline, not bolted on later.
You own everything
Source code, infrastructure and documentation are yours from day one, in your repositories and your cloud accounts.
Technology
We pick the tools to fit the problem
No house framework we push on every client. These are the platforms we know deeply enough to support in production.
React
Next.js
TypeScript
Node.js
Java / Spring Boot
.NET
Python
React Native
Flutter
PostgreSQL
AWS
Azure
Docker
Kubernetes
Terraform
Client feedback
What working with us is like
“PlanWise spent three weeks on discovery before quoting, and that changed the whole project. We dropped two features we would have wasted a quarter building and launched earlier than the original plan.”
Logistics platform, UK
“Our releases used to take a full weekend and a rollback plan nobody trusted. Six weeks after they rebuilt the pipeline we were deploying twice a week during office hours.”
Financial services
“What stood out was that we owned everything from the start — our repositories, our cloud account, documentation written as they went. Handover was genuinely uneventful.”
Healthcare technology
Questions
The things clients ask first
How do you price a project?
Discovery is a fixed fee based on the size of the problem. After discovery you get a costed plan with a range rather than a single optimistic number, and we agree in writing how changes to scope are handled. Longer engagements are usually priced per sprint so you can stop at any milestone.
How quickly can you start?
Discovery work can normally begin within two to three weeks of an agreed brief. Full delivery teams typically need three to four weeks of notice, depending on the skills required.
Do we own the code and infrastructure?
Yes, entirely and from day one. We work in your repositories and your cloud accounts wherever possible, and all intellectual property transfers to you under the contract. There is no lock-in to us as a supplier.
Can you work alongside our in-house team?
Frequently. We can supply a complete delivery team, embed specialists into your existing squads, or take a defined workstream while your team handles the rest. We are happy to work in your tooling and ceremonies.
What happens after launch?
Most clients move onto a support agreement with defined response and resolution times, plus an agreed allocation of development time each month for improvements. If you would rather run it yourselves, we handle a structured handover including documentation and pairing sessions.
Tell us what you are trying to build
A 30-minute call, no charge and no sales script. You describe the problem, we tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.