Nate sat down across from Alex’s desk. Alex had architected many houses for Nate’s brother-in-law Scott, a general contractor. Alex began rapid-firing questions. Where was the property located? What water access did Nate have? Which way did he want to orient the house? Alex also jotted some notes in the margins — details Nate had never considered. Alex would look into them.
Then, Alex shifted the direction of his questions and started asking about Nate’s family. He asked why they wanted guest quarters and what sort of guests they wanted to host. He asked about Nate’s children and their ages. He asked about daily and weekly routines – for the family as a whole and for individuals. He asked about their hobbies, pets, and pastimes. He asked about their storage.
He even wanted to know how many shoes Nate’s wife would keep in her closet.
At first, Nate hesitated. He had not anticipated opening up his life so much to someone who was only building a house. But Alex’s direct and personable manner set him at ease.
Alex then started asking questions about the budget. What aspects of the house mattered the most to Nate? What would he be willing to sacrifice to make those features possible? Nate shared his wife’s number one priority: sunlight had to shine into the kitchen and dining area throughout the entire day. She would give up an easy-to-access kitchen pantry to make that possible.
As an architect, Alex knew that building a house is more than just putting pieces of lumber together. It’s putting them together in a way that fits the people who will live in it. The sunlight in the kitchen wasn’t a luxury; it was a value. The smaller pantry wasn’t a painful sacrifice; it was a reasonable trade. Alex’s job was to understand the difference.
Software works the same way. It shouldn’t be just about sleek reports and dashboards. It should help you tune the daily rhythm of your business — the Monday morning routines, the handoffs that quietly eat hours, the bottlenecks no one has had time to fix. Software should resolve everything your team stopped asking for because they’d given up on change.
And, like a house, the focus is not on convenience at any cost. It’s about prioritization. The main living area is worth extra investment. The storage room in the back corner of the basement needs to be functional, not extravagant. A good software designer helps you tell the difference between necessity and convenience.
When Nate walked away from Alex’s desk, he didn’t know exactly what to expect. But several weeks later, he got a package in the mail. In it, he found a blueprint of the property, along with the soil studies and survey results.
To his surprise, Alex had included a small 3D model of their future home. But one page meant the most to Nate. On it, Alex had written a short summary of Nate’s and his wife’s values and priorities. He noted hospitality, family time, and a functional, efficient design.
That’s what the Design phase produces. It’s a technical blueprint, an articulation of the values behind it, and a clear picture of the life it will hold.
But the blueprint is only as good as the crew that builds it. We’ll look at that next time as we move to Develop.
Are you ready to Design a new solution?
You wouldn’t let an architect skip questions about how your family actually lives. You don’t want to skip those kinds of questions about your business, either.
The Design phase is where we start to go deep — your team’s routines, your bottlenecks, your priorities, and the trade-offs you’re actually willing to make. If you’re ready to move past the napkin sketch and into a real blueprint, please give us a call.
Book a free call with our team, and we’ll ask the right questions so you can find the right answers.
Visit our website to schedule a consultation or call 620-209-4250 to discover what it feels like to have answers at your fingertips.
Sincerely,
Ellis Miller, CEO