Tell us what the system has to do.
One email is enough to start. The person who replies is one of the people who would do the work, which is a short list.
Sunningdale
Cape Town
What to put in the first email
None of this is required. It is just what makes the second message useful rather than a list of questions back.
What the system does
Or what it needs to do. A paragraph is fine. We would rather read your description than a specification written for us.
Where it hurts
The deadline, the outage, the audit, the part nobody wants to touch. The pain is usually more diagnostic than the feature list.
What is already there
Languages, hosting, how it ships today, how many engineers you have. Old and awkward is normal and does not count against you.
What you cannot share yet
Say so and we will work around it. We sign NDAs, and plenty of our best work is under one.
Three steps, and none of them are a proposal deck
We reply within one business day
From a person who would be on the work, not from an inbox rule.
A call, about forty-five minutes
We ask what the system has to do and what it is doing instead. Budget comes later.
A written scope, or a straight no
If it is not our kind of work we will say that in the second message rather than the fifth.
You do not have to decide before writing
Most first emails do not name an engagement model, and that is fine. It usually becomes obvious on the call.