How engagements are scoped and paid for
CorpiXo works two ways: hourly, or fixed-scope and phased. Neither is priced on this page — what follows is how each is scoped, controlled, and invoiced, so the choice can be made on structure rather than a number.
Hourly
- Who it suits
- Ongoing development on a product already in production, scope that's still moving, or a team that needs capacity now rather than after a discovery phase.
- How it works
- Hours are tracked and invoiced weekly or monthly. Each engagement states a minimum and maximum weekly commitment up front, so both sides know the range before work starts.
- What the client controls
- Priority and direction, week to week — and the ability to stop the engagement without working through a fixed-scope contract's change process.
Fixed scope, phased delivery
- Who it suits
- A defined outcome with a defined budget — a specific system, migration, or feature set the client can describe as a finished thing.
- How it works
- Paid discovery produces a written specification and a phase plan. Each phase after that has a fixed price, a defined output, and written acceptance criteria; payment follows acceptance of that phase, not a calendar date.
- How scope changes are handled
- A scope change becomes a new phase, priced and accepted on its own terms. It is never a renegotiation of a phase already agreed to and delivered — that keeps a change of mind on one part of the project from unwinding work already accepted on another.
Comparison
| Hourly | Fixed scope, phased | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Ongoing or moving scope | A defined outcome |
| Scope certainty | Low — the point is flexibility | High — fixed per phase |
| Price certainty | Low — billed against hours worked | High — fixed per phase |
| Speed to start | Fast — no discovery phase required | Slower — starts with paid discovery |
| Change handling | Absorbed into the next week's priorities | Becomes a new, separately priced phase |
| Invoicing | Weekly or monthly, against tracked hours | On acceptance of each phase |
Always included, either model
- Source control from day one
- Every engagement starts with a repository the client can see into, not a deliverable that appears at the end.
- Tests
- Code ships with the tests that exercise it, regardless of which model the engagement runs under.
- Documentation
- Enough that a client engineer who wasn't on the call can still understand why a decision was made, not just what it was.
- A handover that leaves the client independent
- The client can continue without CorpiXo at the end of any phase, or at the end of an hourly engagement. Independence at handover is a real differentiator against lock-in, and it holds whether the relationship ends after one phase or continues for years.
How we decide together
Most clients already know whether the work in front of them is a moving target or a fixed outcome, and that's usually enough to pick a model. Where it isn't clear yet, the first conversation is the place to work it out — not a commitment either side has made.