Questions Before We Get Started

The Blueprint Discovery is a two-week, fixed-price engagement where your team and ours align on what needs to happen, who it's for, and what the system has to do on day one and how it will grow later. Whether you arrive with a fully formed vision or a problem that still needs shaping, we work through it together. The output is a written Build Blueprint: problem definition, recommended architecture, technology decisions, project scope, and a realistic timeline. The full build only opens after the Blueprint is signed off by both sides.

The System Audit and Blueprint Discovery are each fixed at $4,500, invoiced upfront. Follow-on engagements are scoped and priced before any work begins. You'll know the full investment before signing. Once the engagement begins, work is billed monthly in advance. You're never paying for work that hasn't been scoped and agreed on. Valyr Maintain is billed monthly at 20% of your total system investment, on a quarterly cycle. Cancel with 30 days' notice before your next quarter begins. No penalties, no friction.

When a change affects the agreed-upon scope, timeline, or budget, we'll talk through it together before moving forward. Nothing gets added to an engagement without your sign-off.

After a Build engagement goes live, we stay close through a 30-day initial user window. We monitor, respond to issues, and resolve anything that comes up. The post-launch window is included in every Build engagement. After that window closes, most clients move into Valyr Maintain for ongoing support.

Valyr Renovate includes two phases. Phase 1 is the System Audit: a fixed-scope, fixed-price review of your system's architecture, dependencies, deployment pipeline, and risk surface. It includes an AI Risk Review and delivers a written Stabilization Roadmap. Phase 2 is the Renovation Engagement, which opens after the Roadmap is reviewed and signed off. It includes bug triage and critical stabilization, backlog cleanup and prioritization, refactoring and component modernization, deployment pipeline setup, and QA on every change. If your system has a user-facing layer, UX is addressed before anything goes live. If you have an in-house engineering team, we work alongside them.

Valyr Build includes four phases. Phase 1 is the Blueprint Discovery: fixed-scope problem definition, architecture recommendation, and written Build Blueprint. Phase 2 is Design: UX and UI design for every screen and every flow, approved before development begins. Phase 3 is the Build: clean, modular, documented code delivered in two-week cycles with your sign-off at the end of each cycle. Phase 4 is QA and Launch: every feature tested before it ships, deployment, post-launch monitoring, and a support window. If we're building a new solution on an existing system, the System Audit comes first.

Valyr Maintain includes: Continuous monitoring and uptime checks, security updates and patching, bug fixes and incident response, QA on every change, performance optimization, and dependency and compatibility updates.

As part of the development process, we think through user flows, screen layouts, and usability to ensure the product works well for the people who rely on it. But, we’re not a dedicated UX research firm. Projects that require qualitative or quantitative research would be better served by a specialized partner. Our role is to take what is known, apply sound design principles, and build software that people can use with confidence.

Yes.

Yes. For organizations that want to build a specific AI-integrated workflow or internal AI assistant, we scope it in the Blueprint Discovery and build it into the system.

Yes. A significant portion of our clients aren't technical themselves. You don't need to understand the code. You need to understand the outcome. That's what we deliver.

Yes. We work alongside internal engineering teams regularly. We define what we're responsible for, they define what they're responsible for, and we work in parallel. Some clients use us to lead what their internal team can't handle alone. Others use us for specific programs while their team handles other work. Either way works.

We work across industries. Our clients have included research institutions, healthcare technology companies, chemical manufacturers, animal health companies, legal organizations, and industrial services firms. The programs are the same regardless of industry. What changes is the domain knowledge we bring to the discovery phase. We ask a lot of questions before we start. That's how we get up to speed fast.

Every person who works at Valyr is based in the United States. We're headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA with roots in St. Augustine, Florida. We do not offshore any part of our work.

Yes. We sign NDAs when clients require them. Confidentiality is standard practice for us regardless of whether a formal NDA is in place.

The System Audit and Blueprint Discovery each take two weeks. Renovate engagements typically run 8 to 16 weeks after the Audit, depending on system complexity. Build engagements vary based on scope and are defined in the Blueprint. Maintain is ongoing. Every timeline is defined before you commit to it.

If you're on Valyr Maintain, your Valyr team responds. Fast, informed, and accountable. If you're not on Maintain and something comes up, reach out. We stand behind our work. We'd rather hear about a problem and help fix it than have a client struggling with something we built.

We hear this a lot. The short answer is: we're structured differently. Every engagement starts with a fixed-price discovery phase before any significant work begins. You get a written deliverable at the end of that phase and then you decide whether to continue. We don't start a build without a Blueprint. We don't start a renovation without a System Audit. That structure exists specifically to protect you from the situation you've already been in. If something isn't working, you'll know it in two weeks, not six months.

Because scope is defined before the budget is committed. The System Audit and Blueprint Discovery exist to eliminate ambiguity before any development begins. Once a phase is scoped, it's priced. Once it's priced, it doesn't change without your sign-off. We build in two-week cycles with progress updates at the end of every cycle. Nothing moves forward without your approval. That's the model.

No. Most of our clients move into Valyr Maintain after a Renovate or Build engagement. The same team that built it keeps it running. We stay close through the post-launch window and resolve anything that comes up. If you want ongoing support, it's available and it's designed around continuity, not re-onboarding.

These discovery phases are how we protect your investment. Skipping it is how bad software gets built. We've seen what happens when teams go straight to building without a clear picture of what they're building or what they're building on. The Audit and Blueprint aren't a formality. They're the work. The right fix depends entirely on knowing what you're actually fixing.

That's fine. There's no obligation to continue after the System Audit or Blueprint Discovery. You get the written deliverable either way. Some clients use the Stabilization Roadmap or Build Blueprint to move forward with another team. Most continue with us. Either way, you leave with something useful.