Shape
A merchant frustrated with off-the-shelf apps that either bundled too much or charged per-event in ways that didn’t match their volume. They wanted small, owned tools that did one thing well — but had no in-house Shopify-app experience and no internal view of what custom should and shouldn’t include.
What the engagement looked at
- Build-vs-buy decision for each tool — written, with criteria, so the merchant could describe clearly to procurement.
- Function-first scoping — what could run as a native platform extension before any external service exists. Focusing on the smallest component level change which would achieve their needs, vs buying a specialised platform and using 5% of its capabilities.
- Ownership plan — who maintains each tool after launch, what a basic runbook would cover, what an exit looks like if the merchant ever wanted to retire the app.
What was handed over
A scoping document the merchant’s engineering team used to brief the delivery work. Build was elsewhere; the architecture choices and the build-vs-buy decisions were the engagement’s contribution.