Hi, I’m Bill Vivino. When you bring me into your project to chase down a stubborn bug, you’re asking me to solve a mystery—not patch a fender. Here’s why I always propose a short, fixed‑price three‑hour discovery sprint before giving any long‑range estimate, and how that model protects both your budget and my ability to do first‑class detective work.
Your codebase is a living ecosystem of libraries, build scripts, environment variables and historic quick fixes. Until I can recreate the bug, observe it in motion and trace its causes, every “estimate” is just a guess. That investigation takes time even when the ultimate solution is only two lines of code.
Asking “How long will this take?” before the clues have even been gathered is like asking a locksmith how long it will take to find your lost keys. If I quote high, you overpay; if I quote low, I either rush the work or absorb the overage. Nobody wins.
Instead of trading guesses, we fund a three‑hour sprint:
| Your Concern | How the Time‑Cap Helps |
|---|---|
| Budget control | You know the maximum spend up front. |
| Transparency | You see logs, screenshots or a branch—proof of progress. |
| Speed | No contract ping‑pong; we start investigating within a day. |
| Informed decisions | You leave the sprint knowing whether to green‑light a full fix, pivot or pause. |
One client’s AI‑generated codebase was crashing on launch. They feared a week of billable hours. We agreed to the three‑hour cap. By hour two I discovered a missing environment variable in their CI pipeline. The patch was trivial, the downtime minimal and their budget intact. Had the issue been deeper, they would still have left with clarity—not surprise invoices.
You hire me for outcomes, not crystal‑ball predictions. A time‑capped discovery sprint aligns our incentives: you limit risk and I get the space to do real detective work. Ready to tame your bug list? Let’s start with three focused hours and see where the evidence leads.
Have questions? Drop me a message, and let’s chat.